School governors face education challenge, says Lisa Neidich

Lisa Neidich. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

More training, less complaining.

This motto sums up Lisa Neidich’s approach as chair of influential group the Hackney School Governors’ Association (HASGA).

When she first became involved in the group in around 2000 it was known as the Association of Chairs of Hackney Education, or ACHE – an apt acronym given its reputation for taking a relatively adversarial approach towards Hackney Council and its Learning Trust.

“The first thing I did when I got elected to the executive was to realise that you don’t get anywhere doing that,” says Neidich. “You get somewhere by being more diplomatic.

“Since I have been chair I’ve worked really hard at getting both the council and the Learning Trust to trust us.”

Originally from New York, Ms Neidich moved to Hackney with her husband and two children in the late 1990s.

Strong views

An artist in her day job, she has strong personal views on most aspects of education policy and is critical of the government’s fixation with exam results and a “cramming” culture whereby children are schooled to memorise lists of facts rather than develop their creativity or show initiative.

She says: “With primary schools especially I think it is more important to see where the child started from and where they end up rather than merely what they get in a national test, because if they started from a very low point and have made amazing progress, it doesn’t matter what result they get.

“Not all children can get great exam results. There has to be more thought given to what children like to do, and mostly kids need to learn how to think rather than to memorise.”

‘Critical friends’

In keeping with the ‘more training’ half of her motto, she has been instrumental in ensuring school governors in Hackney have access to workshops and talks held every half term and designed to give them the skills to fulfil their role as so-called ‘critical friends’ of schools.

“As governors become more and more responsible for what goes on at schools, and as schools become more autonomous, governors need increasingly to receive better training in areas they are ultimately responsible for but don’t have day-to-day responsibility for,” she says.

In short, the role of a governor is becoming increasingly complicated, and governors must be clued-up about the many changes in the education landscape.

School governors – who are all volunteers – examine the strategic aspect of schools, scrutinise and have input into school action plans put together by head teachers, examine finances, recruit new head teachers and help adjudicate in the case of any disciplinary matter relating to a member of staff or parental complaints.

Governing bodies are intended to be a ‘check and balance’ on the power of headteachers, and, unlike in the United States – where the equivalent of school governors tend to be elected or appointed, meaning such posts can become politicised – in the UK, anyone can become a governor and governors are drawn from all walks of life.

“You want governors who can read a budget or balance sheet and understand numbers,” says Neidich, “but you also want governors who can simply be enthusiastic about the school and be a champion for it.

“Governors need a lot of different skills, so it’s really great to have a governor who is a lawyer or a governor who is an accountant.

“We have one that works for the treasury, for example.

“But it’s also really good to have people with just plain common sense.”

As for what the governors get out of it, Neidich, who has been a governor for about 14 years, says the role is immensely rewarding and allows people to make a real difference to children’s education.

A project she is currently working on involves taking research that was produced by a consultancy firm to show how schools can improve their performance and applying this to school governing bodies to identify ways in which they can operate better. The results will be presented at a conference at the end of January.

Anyone interested in becoming a school governor in Hackney is advised to contact Hackney Learning Trust’s governor services department or visit the School Governors’ One Stop Shop website at www.sgoss.org.uk