Guest Blog on Parent Governor Representatives

This Blog Article was first published as a Guest Blog on ModernGovernor http://www.moderngovernor.com on 19th April 2010.


In 2009 my Clerk of Governors forwarded me an email asking for parent governors to volunteer to stand for our County Council Schools & Learning Select Committee as Parent Governor Representatives.

I did some background research to find that:

Parent Governor Representatives (PGRs) are elected from serving parent governors to represent the views of all parents on local authority committees dealing with education matters.
PGRs were first established in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. PGRs have speaking rights on any issue under discussion by the committee.
The role of the PGR is, primarily, to hold their local authority to account by consulting with and feeding back to parents on discussions and decisions relating to education.
It all sounded very interesting so I submitted my nomination form seconded by two fellow parent governors.

As election time neared I emailed our Governors Association, who were running the election, to find out why the ballot papers had not been sent out to parent governors.

I was delighted and saddened to learn I was the only applicant for the three PGR vacancies so I was duly elected without the need for a ballot.

Although I was delighted to be joining the select committee I was saddened by the apathy that no other parent governor had put their self forward for nomination.

The select committee is very akin to a school governing body where we act as a critical fiend and ensure accountability of the local authority.

But it is not all about reading committee papers, sitting through power-point presentations, listening and challenging; we also have the opportunity to have training and field fact finding trips.

At my first meeting we visited an Outdoor Educational Centre. We had a full VIP tour of facility and had the opportunity to speak to the staff. It is a truly inspirational place and the staff are clearly very passionate about what they achieve there.

The majority of the Select committee meetings start at 10am and finish around 12.30pm. Sometimes there may be a short presentation or fact finding visit afterwards which is purely optional but often beneficial.

There are around seven committee meetings per year plus the odd special meeting. This works out at less than 20 hours per year sitting on the actual committee which is not as big a commitment as some might think during the business day.

I have found the whole experience very interesting and rewarding so far and hope I continue to do so.I would certainly encourage fellow parent governors reading this to find out if their local authority has any PGR vacancies.

I sit on Surrey County Council Schools & Learning Select Committee so if you happen to be a parent governor in Surrey we have two PGR vacancies at this time. More info on Surrey’s PGR Webpage here.

by Sean Whetstone

Chairman of Governors of Polesden Lacey Infant School, Bookham
Parent Governor Representative Member of Surrey County Council Schools & Learning Select Committee