NORFOLK GOVERNORS' NETWORK

Stephen Adamson, Chair of NGN

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the whole education system is going through a period of considerable change, particularly at school level. To name just the most obvious, we are seeing a rapid growth in academies, budget cuts to local authorities, loss of statutory support services, new constitutional arrangements becoming available for governing bodies, growing industrial unrest in schools, a new inspection system, changes to the curriculum, revamped financial services monitoring, and more demanding floor targets. However, those who have been governors for any length of time will have become used to living with a stream of new initiatives, terms and targets, albeit not on this scale. It is not so much change itself that has created and continues to create the greatest challenge for governing bodies, as the unparalleled amount of uncertainty as to what this change will mean.

With a rising tide of political reform meeting the rushing torrents of economic retrenchment, few of us have been sure of the best place to stand, nor whether familiar features of the landscape are not suddenly going to be swept away by the floodwaters. Accordingly, the keynote of the work of Norfolk Governors’ Network in 2011 has been to try to map out the future as best we can, provide some reasonably confident directions, and encourage a flexible mindset that sees opportunities rather than threats.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the three conferences we have held since this time last year. The first two were really one that was repeated with different speakers but the same themes, and was held jointly with Norfolk Governor Services. First in Kings Lynn on 12 March and then in Norwich on 25 March representatives of the National Governors’ Association (the chair and the vice-president) talked about the changes taking place at the national level prefigured in the then nascent Education Bill, while our Director of Children’s Services, Lisa Christensen, and then the Assistant Director, Fred Corbett, explained the reorganisation of Children’s Services and their future plans. David Allen capped off both conferences by talking from personal experience of how sharing business managers across a cluster could benefit all its schools.

Then in June an NGN-organised conference addressed two burning issues that are going to be high on the agenda of all governing bodies over the next year and beyond: how to conduct school self-evaluation without the statutory School Improvement Partner, and how the new Ofsted inspection framework was likely to look. Mike Simm and Julie Westrop gave a joint presentation on the former, speaking respectively on the alternatives and support available to secondary schools and primary schools, while Terry Cook was able to draw on Norfolk’s position as a pilot for the new framework to give us an advance insight into the inspectors’ priorities.

I’d like to say that it was because of careful planning and excellent publicity that these conferences were among the best attended that we have held, but this probably owed at least as much to the widespread concerns of governors about the future. We had to close the delegate lists to both Norwich conferences in advance because we had reached maximum numbers.

The background to the conferences was Norfolk’s restructuring of Children’s Services during the first part of this year. “Restructuring” of course means “downsizing” in face of the considerable reductions in local authority budgets. Although the circumstances were such that there was no opportunity for consultation, NGN officers were kept well informed by senior officials in Children’s Services of what was planned, and endeavoured to share knowledge of the new structure with governors throughout the county. Fortunately, front-line Governor Services staff were not cut in the reorganisation, being largely protected by governor support already being a traded service. However, we were sad to say goodbye to J’Anne Robertson after less than a year in the post of Head of Governance and Leadership, as this responsibility was merged into other senior posts in the two new divisions: Educational Achievement, Improvement and Governance on the one hand and Integrated Education Advisory Services on the other.

Governors across the county will have noticed with regret another departure, that of Sue Platt for early retirement at the end of the summer term. Sue, a previous chair of NGN, has for many years run Governor Services with a great dedication, a formidable breadth of knowledge, and an exceptional empathy for governors grappling with what can be difficult and complex problems. While we were saddened by news of her departure, NGN was very pleased to be invited to be an active partner with Children’s Services in recruiting a successor. We helped redefine the job so as to build on our existing links in order to create a closer working partnership. We expect to see from this a greater exchange of idea and a strengthening of our function as a user group for Governor Services.

After this promising start progress with the recruitment process has not been as fast as we had hoped, due in part to procedures put in place by the Council in response to the current financial stringency, but we are hopeful of seeing a new person in post early in the New Year.

Although the number of consultation groups run by the Council has reduced over the year, we have remained an active partner in all the key forums where the governor perspective is important. At the termly meetings of the Service Improvement Board we meet with the Director of Children’s Services, other senior Children’s Services staff, the headteacher associations and the teacher unions to hear about and comment on developments in services and support for schools, and to share and where possible resolve concerns raised by any of the participants. Members of the County Committee remain one of the pillars of the Schools Forum, which is chaired by Lucinda Poliakoff (Polly), and which has had a particularly busy year as funding streams change in flow rate, dry up or are diverted to reappear in mainstream funding. Some of these changes have led to working groups being set up in which NGN members have been active, such as in deciding how most effectively to allocate funds made available from the National Strategies Grant and the HR Steering Group (see below).

Our Schools Sub-Committee has continued to meet once a term with the Assistant Director of Children’s Services. It acts as a consultation forum, an advance information group and an arena for raising more particular concerns than those discussed in the Service Improvement Board. One major development that has come out of this group is a joint scheme to develop a cohort of experienced governors, provisionally to be called Advanced Skills Governors, who will be able to help governors on other governing bodies by providing mentoring for new chairs, serving if necessary as additional governors, giving advice to struggling governing bodies, or serving on appeals panels. More information on this will be made available to all governing bodies in the county in the next few months as we move towards setting up a pilot.

A task and finish group set up with Human Resources on the establishment of Schools PeopleNet has turned into a user’s group, also meeting once a term. We have been able to ensure that this still developing online service and its associated helpline are responsive to the needs of school governors. Schools PeopleNet can be accessed via the NGN website.

Other consultation groups on which we have been represented include the Additional Needs and Disabilities Partnership Board, Building Maintenance Partnership, Capital Priorities Group, Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Panel, a new ICT Steering Group, MIS for Norfolk Project Board, Norfolk Anti-Bullying Strategy Group, Norfolk Schools Admissions Forum, School Workforce Remodelling Group, 14-19 Strategy Group and the Finance Consultative Group. Members of NGN’s County Committee have also been represented on all the chairs’ forums that Sue Platt held at various venues round the county each term.

If this looks like a major commitment of time by a lot of individuals, it is, and I would like to be able to thank by name each of the representatives on these and on other groups I have mentioned, but I’m afraid that this would make a long list. You know who you are, and I hope you will accept my thanks on behalf of NGN for all your work over the last year.

To go back to my opening remarks, if as governors our job is to try navigate through a rapidly changing world we need, like migrating starlings, to be able to communicate well with each other. Perhaps the fact that we call ourselves a Network shows how communication has always been at the heart of what we do. However, the County Committee decided at the beginning of the year that communication had to be one of our key priorities, and we therefore set up a Communications Sub-Committee to help build on the excellent work that our Communications Officer, Neil Collins (now chair of the sub-committee), had been doing with our website and e-mail newsletter. The website continues to go from strength to strength, being regularly updated with both local and national news for school governors. It is starting to be referenced on other websites for governors, as well as having already become a regular port of call for many Norfolk governors. If you have not already bookmarked www.ngn.org.uk, I urge you to do so.

We have steadily been building up our list of subscribers to the monthly e-newsletter and are now at nearly 1000. However, that still represents less than a quarter of Norfolk’s governors, so do please suggest to governors on your governing body that they visit the website to sign up.

Communication is, of course, a two-way process, and we welcome your views and your concerns, for without them we cannot be truly representative, and with them we can ensure that they get the attention of Children’s Services. We also need them when forming our responses to formal consultations.

The final area of the work of the communications committee is organising conferences, such as this one. A lot of work is put in by individuals on NGN’s County Committee, but they would not happen without the considerable organisational skills of our clerk, Clare Simmons. In fact, much of our work would not happen without her extensive grasp of the organisation’s work, her attention to detail, her tireless work-rate, and her exemplary paperwork. We are all hugely in her debt.

Although as I have said, there are many people I would like to thank, there are three more that I really must name. The first is my predecessor as chair, Martin Sale, for passing on an effective organisation in good heart, whose enhanced reputation owed much to his commitment and passion. The other two are NGN’s vice chairs, Mike Grimble and Polly, not only for their impressive work on the Schools Forum and several other groups, but also for advising me and standing in for me during my absences.

Lastly, NGN itself. The core of the organisation is the County Committee, which consists of a mixture of elected and appointed representatives of Norfolk governors. You will see from elsewhere on this agenda how important it is to maintain a geographical spread. At 29 our current membership is good, but we have vacancies, especially in the west of the county. We are aware of the huge time commitment already of school governors, accordingly the County Committee itself meets only four times a year. If you would like to be considered for membership, please let us know. In June, together with Children’s Services, we held the second of what we hope will be an annual award to governors in the county for outstanding service. Some 14 governors and four clerks were so recognised, while a number more received commendations for good service. So we know there is a lot of good practice out there; we hope you can help us share it to the benefit of all.

Stephen Adamson

Chair NGN

2 November 2011