Business and school leaders working together to enhance each other’s leadership and management skills.
We are developing new projects to encourage and enable members to provide school governors, and to support schools (senior and middle management and governing bodies) with mentoring and specific advice on financial, legal, property matters and sustainability.
In future every single secondary school and primary school should have a business partner.
Gordon Brown20th June 2007
The most effective engagement between companies and schools is a long-term partnership with clearly defined mutual benefits, commitments and deliverables. The Dagenham secondment pilot is an example of best practice.
Dagenham secondment pilot
In March 2007 the secondment pilot was launched in Dagenham under the leadership of Anthony Salz of NM Rothschild and Paul Grant, head teacher of the Robert Clack Comprehensive School. It is based on the idea of seconding high-potential employees into the senior management team of a school.
The secondment model offers the potential for considerable mutual benefits for both the school and the business and for the formation and development of effective partnerships.
Encouraging and enabling your employees to become school governors can have a marked effect on the performance of a school, your business and the individuals involved.
Putting your employees' skills to work in a different context and learning new ones as a governor can improve the overall ability and the confidence of employees. The chance to contribute to the community enhances staff loyalty and morale, and forges useful and mutually beneficial relationships with local people, from whom your company will source both customers and future recruits.
To learn how you can support your employees in become school governors, click here.
There are over 300,000 school governors in England and they are one of the largest groups of volunteers in the country. There is however a shortage of governors – currently there are about 40,000 vacancies – and many would argue there is also a shortage of skills available within many governing bodies. This shortfall limits their capacity to provide schools with the effective strategic oversight necessary to deliver the objectives set out in the Children’s Plan and ensure future improvements in school standards. Governing schools in areas of significant socio-economic disadvantage can be especially challenging, and recruiting governors in those areas with all the necessary skills can be difficult.
Because of these concerns, BITC has engaged the University of Bath to undertake a review of school governance and the role of employee governors.
The project team will present its interim findings, which will be made available to the National Council for Educational Excellence, at the end of June 2008; and publish its final report in October 2008.
