 | | Question: We have an underperforming senior teacher in whom we are investing a lot time and effort helping with certain issues. This teacher has recently been absent through stress for a month. We are concerned that parent governors on the staffing sub-committee may ask awkward questions and wonder whether parent governors should be part of the staffing sub-committee at all? What can we do to be fair to everyone?
Joan Sallis replies: In the early stages of concerns about competence I think governors should take a low profile, since the help and correction a teacher sometimes needs as part of development is a matter for line management, something in which governors are inappropriate and often not particularly useful. If and when the matter reaches a serious level, then the governing body has a role and parent governors should not on principle be excluded just because they are parents, though discretion is needed where the child’s contact is close, e.g. a form teacher or tutor.
We all have to keep our roles separate sometimes in any aspect of public life and if you ruled out any kind of involvement of parents it would offend against the culture of governance. The ordinary criterion of whether a governor has an interest in a matter which makes a fair decision difficult or open to challenge suffices to help decisions in most cases. But the governing body does have a responsibility in ensuring fair play for teachers. Though the governing body do not have the technical status of employers in community schools (it is a clearer responsibility in voluntary aided schools), they do have as a body the responsibilities and liabilities normally associated with an employer.
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