Dear Clare - ratio of governors now l.a.governors no longer nominated

Dear Clare,
Now that local authorities are no longer having nominated governors, how does this affect the ratio of community governors, and parent governors on a governing body? In the case of the school where i am a governor, it now seems that the proportion of parent governors is now double that of the community governors.
Judy Rowley

 

That's news to me. Any chance of a link to information about this change or the name of the legislation that is being used to make the change?

 

h-b-f, I think judy has in mind the change in the composition of GBs going through in the Education Bill, although the Bill has not yet passed in to law and it's not been stated when the changes in GB membership will come into effect. At the moment the existing law continues in force and LAs should be apointing governors as they have always done.
The new law won't necessarily require Community Governors either. It says:

"a governing body of a maintained school
or a voluntary school, persons appointed as foundation
governors or partnership governors, and

Until the DfE issue new Constitution regulations after the Act is passed into law we won't know what it says about how many governors of each category are required, altough the intention was to give GBs more flexibility as stated in the White Paper:


<font size="3">"6.30 Many of the most successful schools have smaller governing bodies with</font><font size="3">individuals drawn from a wide range of people rooted in the community, such as</font>

 

The School Governance (Constitution)(England) Regulations 2007 are still in force, which means that all maintained schools are required to have local authority governors. The proportions of governor in each category are set out in Regulations and vary depending on the type of school (e.g. community or voluntary aided). Your school?s Instrument of Government will set out how many members of the governing body there should be in total and the number governors in each category. Academies are different as the constitution of the governing body is set out in the Articles of Association and there is no requirement to have a local authority governor.
The Education Bill as originally published in the House of Commons (Clause 37) did envisage that there would be no longer a requirement for maintained schools to have local authority governors, but the Government has announced its intention to amend the clause in the Lords and at least one local authority governor will still be required. The legislation is intended to be permissive, that means that governing bodies will not have to change from their current constitution if they do not wish to.
The Education Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent in the Autumn and then there would be a consultation about the new Constitution Regulations. It is expected that these will come into force in September 2012.