Governance Today Summer 2021

The DfE is offering all state funded schools and colleges the opportunity to sign up to a new ‘Education Staff Wellbeing Charter’ - from September. The Charter is a declaration of support for, and set of commitments to, the wellbeing and mental health of everyone working in education. It is hoped schools and colleges will use the Charter to demonstrate to staff that their wellbeing is being taken seriously. Governing Boards may want to take a look at the Charter now in preparation for signing up in the autumn. After the stress of the last 14 months, it would be a positive message to send in support of all staff. Finally, thank you to all our maintained school governing boards who have subscribed to our service again for this financial year, thank you for putting your trust in us once again to deliver the range of support you need to fulfil your role and responsibilities. Academy subscriptions are due this term, ready for September and we hope that you too will continue to trust in us. We are consistently developing new training and support opportunities to ensure you are kept up to date with the changing governance and educational landscape, and will look forward to another very busy year ahead. Thank you for your ongoing commitment to your schools! From your Governance Consultancy Team As I write this I am reflecting on the fact that I have been working from home for well over 12 months, but it feels as though the end is in sight! Everywhere there are positive signs that life is beginning to return to something like ‘normal’, albeit a slightly different ‘normal’. We are keen to offer the opportunity to chairs of boards to contact us and have a conversation about how governance has been kept on the road throughout the time of the pandemic what positives can be identified, what might we not go back to doing and what new ways of working have we adopted that we might keep? If you would like to chat through the highs and lows of the past 14 months, do please make contact: ldp-governorsservice@babcockinternational.com One aspect of the Governance Team work that changed rapidly a year ago was moving all of our governance training online. Thank you to all colleagues both within the team and beyond who enabled this change to take place so smoothly and with such great success. It had been a long-held ambition of ours to be able to offer the choice of virtual or face-to- face training, but the urgent need with the onset of lockdown meant that the move to an online offer was hastened. This is something we shall certainly retain as life in general begins to return to normal. We will maintain and expand our virtual offer, but begin next term to add a number of face-to-face events as well. We think it is particularly important to offer those new to governance the opportunity of a face-to-face session. Please check out the autumn term training programme in the centre pages of this magazine. We really look forward to meeting up with as many of you as possible both virtually and in the flesh! This term Ofsted will continue to carry out monitoring inspections of schools that are less than good and some schools judged ‘requires improvement’. These will not usually be graded. However, where the evidence strongly suggests that a school’s current grade is no longer a fair reflection of its work and there is clear and substantial improvement, inspectors will be able to convert to a full, graded inspection. This will be either immediately, in the case of currently inadequate schools, or later in the term for those that require improvement. Inspections will be mainly carried out on site, but inspectors may carry out some aspects through video or telephone calls where it is more practical, and they may well suggest this route when it comes to talking to governors or trustees. If you are likely to be due inspection this term, we suggest that you have a strategy for how you are going to ensure that the boards’ voice is heard. Partnership and collaboration remain high on everyone’s agenda. Many of you reading this will know that Devon in particular has a strong track record in encouraging and facilitating schools to work together through formal partnership arrangements, and realise the many benefits this can bring. The Governance Team is able to support maintained schools to consider partnership options and we urge any school currently ‘standing alone’ to make contact with us for an initial discussion about potential options and opportunities. The Department for Education (DfE) has recently reiterated its ambition for all schools to ultimately be working within a multi-academy trust model (MAT), but we know that it is people and not structures which make a difference to school improvement and success. Maintained schools working within a federation model remains a viable option. Stand-alone academy trust schools (SATs) are likely to come under increasing pressure to join an existing MAT. The DfE is offering the ‘try before you buy’ model, through which schools enter into a temporary partnership arrangement with a MAT. We have been using this model for many years through our ‘management partnership’ route, so we have a lot of experience to share with any school - academy or maintained - interested in pursuing this option. MATTERS ARISING 1 Summer 2021