Effectiveness, takeup and access to Governor training

Effectiveness, takeup and access to training

•The majority of governors (80 per cent) had made use of face to face training offered through the governor support services. This compares with 32 per cent of respondents who had accessed web based training. In both cases, the majority of respondents felt that the training had been quite useful or very useful (94 per cent and 87 per cent). Further analysis of access and usefulness of training revealed statistically significant differences in the views held amongst respondents by school phase. Proportionally, more primary teachers than secondary teachers had undertaken web¬based training (34 per cent compared with 28 per cent).

•Of those governors who had accessed web¬based training, a greater proportion of secondary school respondents (15 per cent) than their primary counterparts (seven per cent) felt that it was not useful or not at all useful.

Three fifths of governors felt that the training they receive in their role as governor from the local authority governor support services was effective or very effective and over a quarter (29 per cent) reported that it had been satisfactory. Seven per cent of respondents reported that they had not received any training. This suggests there is scope to further promote and encourage training amongst governors. The Schools White Paper (DfE, 2010) recognises that, in some instances, governing bodies have not received the necessary training to carry out their role effectively.
Case¬study coordinators cited inductions and online training most frequently as the service that governors found most valuable.. In one local authority, the decision had been made to reduce the amount of county¬wide training and an alternative approach adopted which involved more partner sessions. For example, if a school in a partnership decided that they wanted some training, this would be offered to all schools in the partnership to allow governors the opportunity to network and identify and share concerns and experiences. An interviewee explained that governors valued the combination of training and dissemination of good practice. He reasoned:

'It’s one thing to offer the advice around good practice; it’s then another matter to actually get them to understand how to do it in their school ...
you might want to provide them with models of good practice, it’s then helping them and training them and supporting them into actually developing their governing body practices into that model of good practice ...'


The full Nfer Report by Tami McCrone,Clare Southcott and Nalia George can be found below

http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/publications/LGMS01/LGMS01.pdf