Education Bill

My Lords, I very much welcome the contribution of my noble friend Lord Knight, as he attempted to widen the debate. I was going to widen it but not quite as widely as he did, but I wanted to make the case for diversity on governing bodies. Although I support the amendments tabled in all noble Lords’ names, including those tabled by the Government, they go only so far. We very much welcome the fact that the Government have listened to the case made by colleagues of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, as she said, for there to be staff and local authority representatives on governing bodies. We made that case as well, and I am glad that it has been taken on board in part. However, the effect will be that a single local authority representative could be on each maintained school governing body, while at the moment there could be up to five local authority representatives on a typical community secondary school governing body. In my experience, when I was chair of the governors of a secondary school for many years, the local authorities in my area used the opportunity to have a spread of places in order to bring diversity of community representation and people with different skills to the governing body. Governing bodies work best—and here I half-meet my noble friend—when there are strong, diverse voices from the community. What worries me about the legislation now is that it almost seems to want to curtail the spread of knowledge and skills. That might be something that the Minister can respond to, although I may have got that wrong. Diversity is very important. The governors whom we have make up one of the largest volunteer forces in the country. We should be upskilling them, valuing them and making sure that they can make a greater contribution. Of course, if my noble friend Lord Griffiths was here he would say that we also need to take account of the fact that the ongoing work of being a governor is increasingly arduous and time-consuming, so we need to make sure that we have the support networks and the training to support it. It is a particular challenge for parent-governors who, with all their other responsibilities, as I know from my own experience, find being a governor particularly time-consuming and challenging. I am anxious about what is to happen when the current governors, who are providing that spread of expertise, are told that they are going to be stood down. There seems to be a lack of a transitional plan. That might mean that it will be more difficult to recruit governors in future if the signal that is going out is that current local authority governors, or their range of skills, are not seen as the future. I hope the Minister can address the whole issue of diversity on governing bodies and how we are going to maintain that strong community voice so that it is not just the parents, teachers or head teachers who help to make the governing body strong but outside challenges and expertise.