LEADERSHIP Governing success


As the complexity and demands of being a governor


grow, is it possible for a lay person to make a full contribution? Secondary governor and Andy Child writes on the importance of governor training


structure, decisions on remuneration or partnership arrangements – every new initiative and freedom delivers a host of challenges for both governors and senior managers to understand and work together on. Governors have therefore moved quickly from


B


being in the background – the people who hand out the end-of-year prizes – to being a strategic decision- making body which needs to exploit opportunities for the benefit of the school. They ensure the delivery of high quality education


Taking the lead: BSA If the headship cap fits...


To lead is to learn how. Hilary Moriarty


reports from the Boarding Schools’ Association’s deputy heads conference


WhEn ThE national College’s chief executive Steve Munby addressed deputies at the Boarding Schools’ Association’s annual deputy heads conference recently, he referred to people “assuming the mantle of leadership”, a garment which, he asserted, fitted some people very well from the off. other people grew into it, and made it a


comfortable fit. And some people found that it was never a good fit. In common parlance, we speak of the leader’s


role like new clothes. how many new heads find themselves having to fill “the very big shoes” of the successful head before them? At a conference where the wish to be a leader is almost a given, the warning that it is an inappropriate ambition for everyone was salutary. But the fact remains that even if they would not make a good leader, very few people would admit today to actively wanting to “follow”. If this is so, then is it not the major flaw in


the almost wholesale importation into businesses and schools of what was originally a model of military leadership. Armies need leaders who have, historically, been the decisive players. But in real life, happy followership is hard to inspire – which may be one of the reasons the military simply made following obligatory. Fail to follow equals court martial. Simple. By contrast, in today’s schools, how often does


one hear of a head leaving a school by mutual agreement because they are deemed “to have lost the confidence of the common room”? In today’s egalitarian but widely ambitious world, leadership can indeed, as Warren Bennis neatly put it,


be akin to herding cats. School leaders in particular lead by permission of the followers, many of whom are convinced that they could do a better job. In such a world, two emerging theories are useful.


one, you learn to lead not by taking a degree with “leadership” in the title, but by leading. Two, you can’t do it on your own – most organisations need “distributed leadership”, i.e. lots of leaders. now, you don’t learn how to swim by standing on


the side of the pool.ditto leading. And perhaps schools are now better training grounds for leadership because they will provide shallow pools where the would-be swimmer can feel the strain as well as the triumph. unfortunately, sometimes even deputies who


should be apprentice leaders are required to do what the head wants done, as the head wants it done, and the deputy may not feel sufficient ownership of what is done to be able to flex their leadership muscles. But if the view of the chief of the national


College is that complex organisations like schools cannot, realistically, be led in today’s world by one charismatic, autocratic, despotic leader, but actually need a leadership team in which all members are leaders in their own right, then there will be more opportunities to learn to lead by leading. Interestingly, Mr Munby’s serious advice is that


even as a leader, you will need a mentor. For every leader, there is all too likely a “dark night of the soul” during which circumstances combine to make him or her doubt their abilities, fitness for the job, or fit of the mantle. At such a time, a mentor is the vital support. leadership is lonely; your deputy and colleagues


are entitled to expect of you the confidence and optimism which are the hallmarks of good leaders even in adversity; but you should not be alone. obama recently remarked that he had not fully


realised that the only things to reach his desk as president of America would be the really tough decisions, because around him were people (mini- leaders?) who had dealt with anything that might remotely be called “easy”. And perhaps it’s the same for heads – mentor and distributed leadership or not, in the end there is only one head, and you can only learn to be one by being one.


•Hilary Moriarty is national director of the Boarding Schools’ Association which runs an annual residential conference for deputies. Visit www.boarding.org.uk


EInGAschool governor has never been more complex. Governors comprise the largest volunteer workforce in the uK and with each successive government the workload and level of expectation surrounding their role and contribution has increased.


Whether it is changes in the curriculum, staffing


within the Every Child Matters agenda, and address the exacting standards and targets set both internally and externally. The 1986 Education Act established the principle


that school governing bodies should be made up of “stakeholders”, a partnership among local people with an interest in schools: teachers, parents and support staff, alongside other governors who are appointed by the local authority, and drawn from the community, such as local businesses. But as the complexity and demands of being a


governor grow, is it possible for someone that is not an expert to make a full contribution to the running of modern schools? In order for governors to be effective, the importance of training and support should not be overlooked. In my mind these elements are absolutely necessary to ensure all its governors are in a position to play a full part in any discussions, and also be in a


position to get across views from students, parents and the local community. My own background is outside education. I wanted


to get involved with the school that both my sons attended, and so I have needed to face all these challenges of becoming immersed in a different world and set of issues. I have been a governor at high Storrs School in


Sheffield for over 10 years, and its chair of governors for more than five years. high Storrs is a large comprehensive secondary school with more than 1,600 pupils and is a specialist school for the performing arts as well as mathematics and computing. This kind of major enterprise demands a consistently


high level of knowledge and insight from governors – not least when it came to dealing with the school’s £24 million refurbishment and new build programme under Building Schools for the Future (due for


Taking the lead: HTI The right support


Education can be very hard for some, meaning


the right support, at the right time is crucial, says Anne Evans


Who Would be a young person? over the past weeks we have been barraged by so many depressing statistics: graduate unemployment at a 15-year high; over 20 per cent youth unemployment; nearly 12,000 children missing from education; a one-in-100 chance of poorest pupils going to a top university. It is tough enough for the youngsters who work


hard, pass exams, and come from stable backgrounds, but for those who struggle at life and at home the prospects can be particularly bleak. This has hit me hard recently. In fact, it has been a real month of extremes, during which I have experienced both shock and inspiration in equal measure. Recently, I heard about the troubling and often


sidelined issue of runaway kids. Around 100,000 children under-16 run away from home or care each year. These are some of society’s most vulnerable young people who see running away as the only means of escaping abuse, neglect and conflict. The cost to them, society, the public purse and


the services which are left to pick up the pieces is immense. Even a non-complex running away incident costs the police around £1,000 and the cumulative cost of dealing with a persistent runaway can be £1 million. While the costs cannot be ignored, the point is that police intervention should be the last resort. We are failing these children if matters have escalated into police hands. And the tragedy is that these young people who


run away from a miserable home life are also running away from another place they should expect stability, support and the opportunity to reverse low life expectations: school.


of course, not all young people run away to


escape their unhappiness and deprivation. Some simply switch off. The way their “out-of-school” lives make them feel spills over into their attitudes, behaviour and aspirations in school. A difficult transition to secondary school can be the start of a slippery slope to low achievement, poor behaviour, exclusion and ultimately another “not in education, employment or training” statistic. But behind the statistic is a young person who needs a chance and the earlier we can give them that chance the better. Alarm bells are also ringing about anecdotal


tales of funding cuts impacting on inclusion work in schools. A lot of this work is focused on early interventions, which are crucial to transforming life chances and proven in their effectiveness. I hope that government initiatives like the Early Intervention Grant prevent the attrition of the fantastic and essential work many schools are doing. high profile projects like Jamie oliver’s dream


School help to focus attention on these issues. he does hit the nail on the head when he says with typical candour “...even if they’re being a pain in the arse it’s a cry for help – they don’t feel like they are being listened to”. I do not believe these young people need a


celebrity high-achiever to flick a switch in their brains. It might only take a young individual who has worked through similar challenges and who is willing to listen. I know this because I have witnessed it through


our pilot peer-mentoring programme Inspire. There is nothing more impressive or humbling than hearing a slightly nervous young man talk with amazement and pride about how his mentoring has helped a disengaged year 7 pupil to keep out of trouble and start to make positive choices. And there is hard evidence of the outcomes: homework done on time; co-operation with teachers; dramatic reduction in detentions; improvement in attitudes to learning. This is exactly the hard evidence the government


demands of early interventions and for this reason I have high hopes for Inspire. It could just be a case of young people doing it for themselves.


• Anne Evans OBE is chief executive of HTI, an independent social enterprise working to develop exceptional school leaders. Visit www.hti.org.uk


completion by September). Results so far from the completed phases are stunning – a reward for the many hours of work by school managers and governors. Experience has shown that increasingly in the


current context, governors need the support of a reliable and constantly updated bank of knowledge and resources which they can dip into. As an example, in my role as a consultant governor,


I have actively promoted the use of the Teachers TV website, which is relevant to the whole teaching community; teachers, teaching assistants, management staff, governors and support staff. As chair it has provided me with an extensive


knowledge base to draw on when it suits me, as well as being a reference point for everyone on a governing body. The ability to access information in the evenings and weekends is crucial, given that being a governor is a voluntary job. Expert presenters like Mike Baker also cover the


really topical things that governors have to face all the time such as: school improvements, finance and premises – the real, live issues which are familiar to education professionals but which can be alien to parents and other non-experts. Authority and consistency is what is most needed


by governors. For this reason, I will also make use of governornet.co.uk if I need reference on the legal side of things. In the current financial climate, schools are not in


a position to make sizeable investments into providing formal training for governors – what might be seen as being a peripheral issue when compared with the urgent needs and contingencies of day-to-day operations. But governing bodies need to be more conscious


of how they can continue to be inclusive, keep all their stakeholders involved and aware, if schools are to be genuine community-based institutions which are totally focused on ensuring every student achieves.


SecEd


• Andy Child is a secondary school governor at High Storrs School in Sheffield. He is also a consultant governor and trains governors in Sheffield.


SecEd • March 3 2011


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