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School Governorship: is it worth it?

Laura Hood

Hi all

I have recently seen a few adverts for the opportunity to be a governor of a number of local schools. They often want someone with HR experience. 

I know that this would be tough - they say it would be around a day a month but I am sure it would be much more. However, I would like a place on our Company's board and felt that this would potentially give me a (safer) stomping ground and an opportunity to work strategically, whilst offering my skills which I'm sure would be rewarding.

Does anyone have any insight into this?

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  • Hi Laura

    Other colleagues I'm sure will have deeper and more current experience, but based on some past experience on governing body of a small local primary school, I wouldn't bank on getting a great deal of strategic general management experience from it. That said, it probably depends on the particular school and on the realpolitik of the head teacher / governing body relationship. HR expertise I think is now much-needed on school governing bodies though, as many head teachers I think struggle in this regard and increasingly no longer have external support mechanisms such as local government HR departments to rely upon ( not that it was ever necessarily too good a thing to treat school teachers exactly like local government officials ).

    There probably would be extensive generic central governor support and training available to you as a new governor, which may well be of help to you re the company Board aspirations.

    So, it may be either rubber stamping or strategic direction-setting and navigation as a school governor or probably a bit of both, but whatever, think it's unlikely not to add in some ways to your career development and has the potential to do so considerably. And in any event is likely to be an asset to the effective governance of our schools.
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  • Hi Laura

    Other colleagues I'm sure will have deeper and more current experience, but based on some past experience on governing body of a small local primary school, I wouldn't bank on getting a great deal of strategic general management experience from it. That said, it probably depends on the particular school and on the realpolitik of the head teacher / governing body relationship. HR expertise I think is now much-needed on school governing bodies though, as many head teachers I think struggle in this regard and increasingly no longer have external support mechanisms such as local government HR departments to rely upon ( not that it was ever necessarily too good a thing to treat school teachers exactly like local government officials ).

    There probably would be extensive generic central governor support and training available to you as a new governor, which may well be of help to you re the company Board aspirations.

    So, it may be either rubber stamping or strategic direction-setting and navigation as a school governor or probably a bit of both, but whatever, think it's unlikely not to add in some ways to your career development and has the potential to do so considerably. And in any event is likely to be an asset to the effective governance of our schools.
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