NGA Report on governance workload

The National Governance Association (NGA) has published ‘Taking stock of governance workload’ ensuring that school and trust governance is sustainable.

The report notes that schools in England are governed by approximately 250,000 volunteers and that they undertake this civic role in order that children and young people receive the best possible education.

The NGA are concerned that recently there have been indications that the heightened intensity of governance is posing a threat to its sustainability. They believe that over a quarter of all governance volunteers and a third of chairs are contemplating resigning with the time and pressure of the role being the main drivers.

Their report highlights the following key pressures on governance:

• Increasing number of exclusions
• Increasing numbers and complexity of complaints
• Increasing board vacancies leading to pressures on others
• The increased responsibility on chairs to take on additional work to reduce pressure on others, in turn hindering succession planning
• Inefficient board practice and dysfunctional dynamics leading to frustration and poor use of time
• Training expectations beyond induction becoming overwhelming
• Amount of time to govern difficult to reconcile with other commitments.

The NGA believes the way forward may be:

• Strategies used to deal with complaints escalated to boards must be reviewed at organisational and national level
• The governance role being manageable is dependent on it remaining strategic and well defined
• There must be a change in the role of boards in exclusions, this is no longer sustainable and a new approach is needed
• There has been a notable shift in support for remuneration for the role among the governing community.

Read the report here.