It is with great pleasure that I introduce our projects’ first round of articles in the projects’ blog series, Educators in Educational Governance (E-EDGE). I am the Principal Investigator in the project working with Dr. Andrew Allen, a governance consultant, lecturer and researcher and Bernadette Reilly, a BCU’s doctoral student researching school governance in England. My background and interests lie in educational governance in England and I hope to benefit my work from my interactions with international research in public policy governance. Our project aims to explore the professional status of teaching and Academic Staff Governors (ASGs) in the governance of educational institutions in Birmingham. In this early stage of our project, we present three pieces introducing the project and covering important concepts such as Post New Governance and democratic educational governance (see the second article in this series by Andrew Allen), communities of practice and community governance (see article by Bernadette Reilly) and recruiting academic staff to governance roles.
Abdulla Sodiq
Lecturer in Education Studies
The educational governance research project is externally funded by British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) and aims to gain insights into how academic/teaching staff governors (as teachers, lecturers and professors) contribute to the governance of their educational institutions in Birmingham and surrounding areas. We will also ascertain the value of the professional roles attached to academic/teaching staff in their governance roles. The fact that we are focussing on Birmingham is of importance. It was not long ago, Birmingham was embroiled in a governance controversy surrounding a number of local schools (Education Committee, 2015). At the same time, BCU taking a lead in unpacking governance in Birmingham and surrounding area provides yet another opportunity to highlight the important role the university has in being an actor in improving the education systems in the local area. I feel the project itself is unique in the way it aims to demystify governance across three sectors of education: schools, colleges and universities – not an easy feat and a rare one at that. What is also exciting is that we are making an attempt to revisit in a wider sense what academics, Professor Earley and Professor Michael Creese (Institute of Education, London; Earley and Creese, 2001) concluded through their school governance research two decades ago - that if you are a teacher/educator in a governance role at your institute, your role follows a ‘restricted professional’ model. So, fast forward to 2022, the question we have is, can the same conclusion still be drawn of the ASGs (Academic Staff Governors) or teachers, lecturers and professors acting as governors in their own institutes. The aim of the E-EDGE blog series is not only to report on the project but to engage in a conversation with the educational governance community and the wider educator public about their role implications for public policy governance.
One of the ideas that we are exploring is the value that educators could bring into governance deliberations. Speaking to school, college and university leaders I hear them often talking about the challenge in recruiting ASGs to governing boards. Governors from any constituency, whether it is from the staff/student body or externally from the community appear to be difficult to recruit but they are the largest body of volunteers in the UK, with a 350 thousand volunteering in UK schools and over 8 thousand in HE and FE institutions (Mckenna, 2017). Numbers of educators as governors are difficult estimate to make but if you go with one ASG per school/college/university as I have seen on many boards, there may be 32,000 teachers, lecturers and professors acting as ASGs in their own institutions with potential to double the number to 64,000 places, considering the maximum numbers usually observed per institution, ie: two places for ASGs per board**. Given this significant number of educators with potential to influence strategy in their school, college or university, it is important to consider why it may be a challenge to recruit educators to these positions – perhaps, it’s time and commitment and given the stressful work they do to support children and adults’ education, or they may consider they already do enough unpaid (voluntary) work as part of their roles! Some leaders express frustration at what they call the lack of interest amongst their academic staff but a point to also consider is how much effort their management puts into publicising and incentivising academic staff to take up staff governor roles. Amongst the staff, how much do we know and hear about who the ASGs are at our own institutions. Where ASGs are elected by the wider staff body, how are the elections advertised and perhaps more importantly, once elected how influential role do they play or can play in contributing to key strategic decision of the institutions, whether the institution is a school, college or university. External/lay members of governing bodies may sometimes feel they are too remote form the institution simply because of they are external or experts in fields other than education and this underlines the specific area where ASGs are much needed – providing the shop floor perspective to governance as front-line staff serving the needs of children and students – whether it is about changing the educational direction of the institution, expanding or sharpening the focus of the organisation in institutional improvement. Very often, academic staff are expected to provide academic or pedagogic expertise but in my research, ASGs have been observed to play a much wider role (Sodiq and Abbott, 2018). Some ASGs believe they are management experts by virtue of being the observer of how effective the management is or simply because they are part of the local community, or sometimes because their academic subject expertise, which other governors are not necessarily aware of.
In our project, we have now collected the data through surveys and interviews. Through our data analysis, we hope to address some of the above points and also other poignant points such as establishing how fulfilling a role an ASGs is, how they contribute to governance and answer the important question, are ASGs at the 4 institutions a group restricted professionals embroiled in net of bureaucracy, intuitional politics and questions about democracy; and if they are not in a restricted role, establish how freeing and invigorating a role it is. We hope to return to you with the second series of the E-EDGE blog around October 2022 with emerging findings from the project but also the wider questions of researching educational governance and improving the field through exchange of ideas between educational governance and tangential fields such as corporate governance.
*based on number of UK schools, FE colleges and HE institutions provided by BESA, 2022
**the number may be significantly higher in some universities, for instance, Oxbridge may have most of the whole staff body in their governing body; and another example, up to 6 academic staff from the Senate at Manchester University.
References:
- Earley, P. and Creese, M. (2001) The uncertain teacher governor: seeking a role? Research Papers in Education, 16(4), pp. 323-335.
- Education Committee (2015) Extremism in schools: the Trojan Horse affair, 17/03/2015. [Select Committee Paper] Education Committee (HC 473, 2014-2015, para 80). Available at: Link
- Mckenna, D. (2017) Just how many public governors are there in the UK? Available at: Link [Accessed 01/05/2022].
- Sodiq, A. and Abbott, I. (2018) Reimagining academic staff governors'; role in further education college governance. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 23(1), pp. 138-157.