Mary Reid

One of my jobs for the last two years has been to ensure that the Council appoints governors to schools.  Some governors in almost all the schools are appointed by the local authority, but I have changed the way this is carried out.

The traditional approach to appointing local authority governors was for each political party to have nomination rights in proportion to the seats they held on the Council. 

This was becoming less and less workable, and led to some absurdities.  For example, every four years, after a change in the political balance on the Council, some governors would have to stand down simply because they had been nominated by the wrong party. It was also becoming difficult to recruit new governors because some people did not like to have a political label.

The three party groups had been very sensible about this, and for some time had been swapping nomination rights, or even appointing members of the another party, in order to get the best people in post.

In the meantime, the DfES had been encouraging people to become governors and some excellent candidates were reaching us by through the School Governors' One-Stop Shop.

I chatted with the Conservative and Labour spokespersons and suggested we worked towards a non-political procedure, and I'm pleased that they have supported me. As a vacancy occurred the school would tell us about their needs. We would try to match them with someone chosen from those who had applied directly, or from people we knew or from suggestions made by the school.

This procedure has been running for about 18 months so far and we met today to review it.  In the past we struggled to fill vacancies; now we actually have a short waiting list of candidates.

But we are always looking for new people, so if you would like to find out more about becoming a school governor please contact me or the Governor Support Unit at Kingston Council. 

We need people who can take a strategic view of education in the borough, so you do not need to have any specific contacts with any of the schools already.  We particularly welcome people with experience in business or public services, but don't be put off if that does not apply to you, as we also need a wide variety of people who can bring fresh thinking to their governing bodies.