I have complained before about the guff written about governance despite also being guitly of contributing to it [1]. But the debate is so clouded by the conflation of arguments that I feel compelled to revisit. Emma Knight's recent blog from the NGA is a prime example of an argument that purports to be about governance but is essentially an attack on academy trusts and ignores the only element of governance that matters.
The function of governance is to ask one question, "Is it working?" This can be qualified by supplementary questions such as, "Is it getting better quickly enough?". But ultimately the first question is the one that matters.
The trouble with the arguments presented in the NGA blog is one of framing. The blog seeks to question the effectiveness of academy governance by contrasting it with the governance of maintained schools and asserting that 'localness' is the thing that is missing.
First and foremost, the governance of local authority maintained schools is not the yardstick. Local does not equate to good and central does not automatically equate to bad. Whether you support or oppose academies [2], maintained school governance is average at best and in the main absent. Its weakness was why academy reforms were implemented in the first place.
When a school is good, or even better, the source of its success is more often the school leader than the governing body. The DfE has known this for years but doesn't say it publicly. Because it doesn't want to piss off all the good people who volunteer to be school governors and because the DfE knows that it lacks the capacity to actually govern the schools itself. Indeed many schools are good despite their governing bodies; whilst most schools that are weak are so because of their governing bodies.
For clarity I am not claiming that Academy Governance is any better, only that it tends to be more centralised.
When a school is not working and is not getting better quickly enough it is often the governing body that is resisting the need to improve either by rejecting the need or by excusing the progress. Whilst academy 'freedoms' were largely bullshit peddled to get new and vigorous 'business people' involved in bringing efficient 'corporate governance' to schools, the one freedom that academy trusts do have is the freedom to dismiss ineffective local governors.
Emma's assertion that, "The evidence tells us local governance is here to stay" is perhaps the most dangerous in her blog. First she cites no evidence. She alludes only to opinion and preference. But the question to be asked by and of governance is, "Is it working?" not, "Is it local?". The things we should be examining are which models of governance work, not which ones we like or affiliate with politically.
Now before you think I am lobbying for centralised control, I should point out that I am a card carrying fan of subsidiarity. I firmly believe that decisions should be made as close to the people that they impact as the capacity of the people making the decision allows. But that does not mean that local is automatically best. I would not expect a Teaching Assistant to set the budget for a school any more than I should be allowed to design the curriculum for a school which I might visit no more than once as year. The decisions should be made where the knowledge of the people impacted is balanced by the professional expertise required to make the decision.
And doing that does not automatically require local governing bodies. What it does require is better stakeholder engagement in all schools.
There are two practical things we could do to encourage this change.
First government could require that MATs consult children, parents and stakeholders regularly for their views and publish their responses in their annual reports.We poll our staff and parents every half term and publish their opinions twice a year.
Second, and I have been suggesting this for years, Ofsted could decouple its leadership judgement from its governance judgement. It would very quickly become apparent which schools have governing bodies and SLTs woking together in alignment and which have school leaders furiously coaching their governors the night before inspection.
[1] Here is one of my previous attempts to simplify the subject
[2] I am on the record as stating that the manner in which this government and its predecessors have implemented academy reforms is nothing short of cultural vandalism
