The FE Commissioner reflects on college governance

After his first six interventions, the Further Education Commissioner has written to colleges with some reflections. The whole letter is worth a read but below are some extracts with particular relevance to college governance. Governors and clerks should dwell on his thoughts:

• College governors must take greater ownership of their college, driving the strategic direction forward and challenging the Principal and senior leadership team on the quality of teaching and learning and the institution’s financial position. 
• College governors must satisfy themselves that they have a complete picture of how the college is operating by triangulating the information they receive with other sources of information, for example the new Data Dashboard being produced by Ofsted and which is due to be published in the Spring. 
• It is essential to undertake effective succession planning of the governing body; bringing in new and diverse skills and fresh thinking regularly.  I especially see the case for more business people on boards.
• Clerks are vital to the success of colleges.  Clerks ensure that good governance practice is followed and that the Principal/senior leadership team are not exceeding their authority.  Clerks should be independent, supported and have the skills and experiences necessary to fulfil their role.  
• If you’re not already doing so, it is very important that you conduct an annual professional appraisal of your Principal, which examines and reports on their performance to date and sets clear SMART targets for the year to come. 
• College governors should have regular and purposeful training and development. …  They often are working in something of a vacuum with little or no contact with Board members from other colleges and hence are unable to benchmark their performance against their peers. 
• There is some evidence that college governors can be reluctant to take the difficult decisions when there is evidence of poor performance.

Now that I am resuming blogging, I will be writing on some of these governance themes as well as some not mentioned.