I wrote an opinion piece for the Times on the case against paying School Governors. It was published on page 27 of today's Times (Friday 2nd December 2011)
This was my original submission before the Times slightly edited it.
The question of paying School Governors is
not a new subject but one I feel very strongly should not happen in any form.
As a Chair of Governors and an Advanced Skills Governor I often run training
workshops to help fellow governing bodies become more efficient. The first
question I ask them all individually is “why did you become a governor?”
Invariably the answer is something akin to “because I wanted to be part of my
child’s education” or “I wanted to put something back into the community” or “I
am passionate about Education.”
The 300,000 strong school governing
community are the biggest and possibly the most successful volunteer army in Britain
and my concern is that, in remunerating School Governors, their independence
and passion for the role they freely do would be removed.
The key to modern governance is that a
governing body is a ‘corporate body’, sharing the responsibility, workload and
decisions. I agree the role has become increasingly more complex, demanding and
time consuming but it is also very rewarding. Although the primary goal for any
governing body is improving outcomes for children, many governors report that
governance also has a beneficial impact on their personal career development.
It often teaches them to take a strategic view, looking both forward and
outward and learn about skill sets they wouldn’t normally come across in their
usual day-to-day lives.
Being a chair of governors has taught me to
listen to every other point of view first around the table before putting my own
opinion last. It’s about great team work!
I believe paying individual governors
undermines this concept and could lead to people entering the profession with
the wrong motives from the start.
If school governors were paid, would it give
the tax payer value for money? Who would appoint them, who would they report to
and who would carry out their performance management? These are all big
questions that need to be addressed.
I would be very concerned if any public
money was diverted from the Education budget to pay for a governor payment
scheme. In these times of financial austerity I am sure the money would be better
spent elsewhere to directly benefit pupils.
There is already a legal framework for
governing bodies to pay ‘out of pocket’ expenses to their school governors.
Legitimate allowances include travel allowances to meetings & training
courses, cost of child care while attending meetings/training and the cost of
photocopying/printing papers for governing body business. Many school governors
do not claim any expenses and the main reason given is that they did not think
they should receive any financial ‘reward’ for their role as a volunteer.
I do believe there is room to compensate
employers with tax incentives for employees who give up their time during work
hours to be school governors. Under employment law, employers must give
employees who are school governors “reasonable time off’ to carry out their
duties. However there is no definition of reasonable and the time off does not
have to be paid. Investing money encouraging businesses to be involved in local
schools would be far more beneficial to the employers, their employees and the
schools.
A scan of the article can be found here and covers both the for and against arguments.
The scan of the article can be downloaded from here
