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MORE BLACK SCHOOL GOVERNORS NEEDED
School Governors One Stop Shop (SGOSS), a charitable recruitment agency that places school governors, is seeking more candidates from the black communities, it announced yesterday at a private press briefing.
SGOSS is a not-for-profit recruitment agency that handles placements for volunteer governors in England. Since it was established it has placed around 11,500 volunteers. Steve Acklam, its Chief Executive said yesterday that one of its major challenges is the perception: “That all school governors look like me – middle-aged, middleclass, white and normally male.”
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Other common misconceptions are that volunteers have to have children, have to give up a day job and have to be of a certain age. Acklam said that over the last six years SGOSS has been working hard with local authorities and governor organisations to try to change those perceptions.
A large secondary school has a budget of up to £6 million and like running any business, the task requires particular talents, Acklam said. |
But he stressed that it is “desperately important” , whether the school is London-based or elsewhere: “That the governing body
represents the community that that school serves.” In some inner city areas the black and minority ethnic school population can be as high as 70 per cent. Acklam pointed out that: “Unless there is an understanding on the part of the governing body what that means in terms of culture, in terms of aspiration and in terms of background, it’s highly unlikely that the governing body will be able to effectively help them get the best possible education.” Being a school governor is the most important voluntary role within education, Acklam said: “Because it helps every child in the school if it works well.”
Nationally, there are around 350,000 school governor places in 23,500 schools and at any one time there are always 40,000 vacancies as a result of natural turnover. Acklam said that SGOSS: “Are particularly looking to try and bring more people forward from an ethnic background and from a younger age group with the skills that the schools need.”
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According to statistics supplied by SGOSS, nationally, 11 per cent of governors are from an ethnic background. SGOSS claims that it is more successful in this area of recruitment, claiming that 24 per cent of its governor database is from an ethnic background, with 8 per cent of those being from the black communities. Acklam said that in a recent communication with the 150 local authorities in England, of the 87 that replied, 50 said that increasing diversity was a priority. |
In England the areas of most urgency in terms of recruiting governors are in Hampshire, Birmingham, Leeds and Nottingham, although many vacancies exist in London, Devon, Preston, Blackburn, Kent and elsewhere.
There are various types of school governors. Community governors are appointed by the governing body to represent the community; Local Education Authority (LEA) governors
are appointed by the LEA that maintains the school; parent governors are elected by other parents and must have a child of school age to be voted onto the governing body; staff governors are elected by the school’s staff and foundation governors are appointed to represent the organisation which established the school.
School governors must be able to commit around 6-8 hours per month during school term time. Governors usually serve for four years but volunteers can resign if circumstances change. Governors can also be elected to serve a further four years once their initial term
has been completed.
Thirty year old Hugh Goulbourne is a young, black successful solicitor who works in the City and serves as a governor at Lister Community School in Plaistow, East London. Lister has a school population of 1337 of which 18 per cent are black, 63 per cent Asian,
8 per cent other and 11 per cent white. Goulbourne is of mixed African Caribbean and Indian heritage.
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