Governor vacancies will climb higher

The new SEND Code of Practice ups the ante for governors, asking them to play a significant role in examining what every teacher is offering every child on every day, says Leoarna Mathias...

The new Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice came into force just a few weeks ago and while it’s likely to be some time before its impact can be properly assessed, that doesn’t mean the teaching profession isn’t already feeling the pinch. The underlying principles of this new guidance – that we see the 0 to 25 age range as an integrated whole, and give clients a greater say in how they receive support – seem eminently sensible. New Education, Health and Care Plans effectively replace educational statements and are broader in their coverage of services and support. So far, so good. However, the new legislation also calls on schools to both audit their existing provision of support for students with SEND (with ‘value for money’ high on the agenda), and directs schools to spend greater proportions of their (already stretched) budgets on meeting the needs of individual children, before being able to access further support from their local authority.

Of course, all of this has implications for the governing body. In order to properly support staff teams that are wrestling with these new ways of working, governors need to be up to date with the new legislation, and have a broader appreciation of the issues that arise when working with children experiencing SEND. In my own local authority there has been training available to governors throughout the last year, and a quick web search for the phrase ‘SEN governor’ will bring up plenty of advice from far and wide. Whether or not the governing body of your school has a dedicated SEN governor, there is undoubtedly an expectation raised within the new code that the governing body will be very hands-on in the management of all provision for children with SEND challenges.

In March 2011 a Green Paper, Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability set in motion a consultation process that only truly ended in December 2013 following the closure of the consultation on the draft code itself. The Green Paper highlighted how “school governors are vitally important in improving outcomes for children with SEN.” The importance of the governor’s role in delivering the expectations of government has not lessened as a result of the consultation. Governors need to be able to understand data about the progress of children identified as having SEND needs, adopt a genuinely expansive approach to inclusion, and scrutinise all teaching within the school to ensure that it is of sufficiently high enough to meet the individual needs of SEND children. Beyond this, the requirement to work in genuine partnership with other agencies has been further enshrined in the legislation. In essence, governors play a significant role in examining what every teacher is offering every child on every day.

Schools were, of course, endeavouring to meet all these goals before the new act came into force. But with an increased focus on accountability and cost-effective interventions, the teaching profession is now subject to another layer of pressure. Both the NUT and the DfE’s own figure demonstrate a substantial increase in the average working hours for teachers under the coalition government, with 90 per cent having considered leaving teaching in the last two years. In a Europe-wide survey of teachers, those in the UK were found to have the highest rates of burnout (teachers.org.uk). But what of governors? If we are to be called upon to underpin the new regulations with our time and ‘professional’ knowledge, and to be held to account on the day Ofsted comes calling, are we simply creating a voluntary role that no-one in society will want to take up? There is no union to defend governors – they will simply resign their seats, and the current rates of governor vacancies will climb ever higher.

No one would reject the idea that we must, from now on, be ‘less reactive to prescribed periods of failure’, as Jane Friswell of NASEN has called for, and instead, be proactive in our support of children with such needs. But placing the onus on governors to create and sustain this further culture shift, which requires them to be, in reality, highly knowledgeable, highly skilled, quasi-education professionals, is evidence of how much governors are now expected to ‘raise their own game’. Sadly, the unintended consequence of the new code may just turn out to be that many otherwise enthusiastic governors no longer want to be on the pitch.

About the author

Leoarna Mathias inspected early years settings for 11 years. She now lectures at the University of St Mark and St John and writes for a range of publications on education and early years issues.