I have been working with school boards in various ways for almost four decades. I have been a member and Chair of school boards, an observer of school boards when working as a Head of School, an evaluator of school boards during accreditation and appraisal visits on behalf of several authorities, and for the past 12 years, I have been a consultant to tens of school boards in many nations of the world.
During this work, I have seen school boards encountering many challenges and problems, but there are four pressures that seem to recur more often than most:
1. Maintaining a mission-centred, strategic board focus.
2. Aligning board culture and senior management practice.
3. Planning adequately for board and senior management succession.
4. Implementing effective risk management.
It is only possible to examine each of these at a general level in a brief article such as this because every school’s situation has unique forces and elements. At the risk of unseemly self-promotion, that is why wise school boards seek support from independent, experienced, politically neutral consultants such as myself, preferably before irritating or sub-optimal pressure points become toxic (poisonous to the school’s culture and/or internal operations) or radioactive (explosively contagious negative impacts beyond the school gates).
1. Maintaining a mission-centred, strategic board focus.
A school’s Mission is its enduring purpose. Its Vision is the agreed priority area (or areas) to focus on in order to work towards achieving the Mission over the next few years. Many school boards are so focussed on the urgency of their legal and financial fiduciary duties that they fail to devote sufficient quality time to developing and then monitoring the school’s strategic progress. This can be expressed in several ways such as excessively long board meetings that don’t follow a tight agenda, poorly structured discussions, excessively detailed papers containing information that focuses on matters which are unrelated or poorly related to governance, and ineffective use of committees as a means of channelling detailed analysis of minutiae away from board meetings.
Boards that have addressed this pressure point tend to adopt one or more of the following techniques:
2. Aligning board culture and senior management practice.
The most common cause of governance crises in schools is a souring of the relationship between the Board and the Principal. As explained in this article, the Board’s role is governance, whereas the Principal’s role is management. Board members should (almost) never become involved in operational tasks, while the Principal must respect the Board’s authority to determine the direction (Mission) of the school. When the roles of governance and management become blurred, dysfunction is inevitable. Similarly, if communication between the Board and the Principal breaks down, there will be a serious disconnection between the Board’s intent and what is happening in the school. When this happens, discord and confusion often arise and the Principal may lose awareness of the Board’s priorities, while at the same time the Board might find they are receiving reports from the Principal that fail to address its areas of interest.
The ideal balance is achieved when the Principal and senior management are simultaneously challenged and supported by the Board. Attaining this goal requires professionalism both on the part of board members and senior managers, and more importantly, an atmosphere of mutual trust and open, transparent communication. The Principal and senior managers must be open to new challenges, but board members collectively must take care only to challenge ideas, strategies, and options – never to attack individuals.
Conflicts of ideas are healthy for school boards; conflicts between individuals are not.
3. Planning adequately for board and senior management succession.
Many school boards struggle to attract motivated people who embrace the school’s Mission while also possessing skills that are useful to the Board. Sometimes, this relates to the restriction placed upon many school boards that its members may not receive any remuneration or honorarium for their service, even though the demands of time and effort required of members of school boards are growing relentlessly. In other cases, the difficulties arise because the school is located in an area where relatively few residents possess the skills required to serve on a school board, or perhaps the board has a restrictive set of eligibility criteria based upon factors such as gender, religious faith, or membership of certain organisations.
Many boards seem to have particular difficulty in recruiting younger board members. Perhaps this is understandable as people in their 20s and 30s are typically in the life-stage of caring for young children and/or building their careers. Consequently, many boards have an over-representation of older retired and semi-retired members who may be highly competent (and usually are), but at the cost of diverse perspectives from younger demographic groups.
There are certain “rights” and wrongs” when speaking with prospective new board members. For example, it is wrong to say things like:
There are also some questions you wish you could ask, but you probably shouldn’t, such as:
On the other hand, there are questions you should ask:
4. Implementing effective risk management.
The importance of risk management in schools has grown sharply over the past few decades. In part, this reflects higher expectations of schools’ obligations to provide safe and healthy environments for their students, staff and visitors. However, in more than a few cases, the obligations are fuelled by lawyers’ threats, government compliance requirements, and fears of reputational damage through social media posts.
Quite rightly, schools everywhere are now required to have comprehensive policies on managing risk that are implemented through operational risk management frameworks and tracking. The risk management policy will typically include a definition of risk and a classification of the various risks faced by the school, together with a statement on limits of acceptable risk. The operational risk management framework will usually include risk likelihood–consequence matrices that are put into practice through a spreadsheet or other documentary monitoring framework that allows regular reporting to the Board of risks that have been identified, progress made towards reducing or eliminating the risk, and the current areas of continuing risk.
Some additional information on risk management is provided in Risk Management. It is difficult to generalise or recommend a generic policy or set of practices for risk management because the environment and circumstances of every school are different. However, the one important common universal factor is that every school must have a robust risk management framework which the board monitors regularly to ensure thorough compliance and a safe, healthy environment for everyone involved with the school.
Not having a robust, effective risk management strategy in place is perhaps the biggest risk that any school and its board can create for itself.
- Dr Stephen Codrington
We offer support for school leaders and board members in many areas, including board succession (including recruiting board members), mission, vision and strategic planning, and risk management.
Further information on this and many other facets of best practice in school leadership and governance is provided in the books “Optimal School Governance", and “Insights into School Leadership and Board Governance”, which can be ordered directly through Pronins.
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