 | | Question: I am relatively new teacher-governor. I want to re-start a staff council within the school which has not met for about two years. I stopped attending because it was chaired by the headteacher and I did not think that this was appropriate for such a forum. Am I able to insist that the new staff council is only to be attended by staff and that senior management will be informed of content through the minutes? I have a good relationship with both the staff and senior management within the school but I feel very strongly that staff sometimes need a safe forum to air their views.
Joan Sallis replies: I agree with your last sentence, provided it can be agreed peacefully, and perhaps a very mature head with plenty of confidence would go along with it. You are not in that situation and you personally are certainly not able to insist on anything.
I can understand your concern to have a forum in which staff can speak freely though I am far from sure that in your case the imposed exclusion of the head would be the right way to go about it even if it were feasible. If the whole staff said they wanted this it would be theoretically possible to put it to the governors to determine as a matter of principle, but it would put them in a very difficult position and I would be surprised if they did agree.
Don’t think I am being deliberately discouraging. I actually think only a few schools are very undemocratic places and that it is healthy for staff to be able to speak freely. Indeed the Taylor Committee, of which I was a member and which created governing bodies as we know them, recommended that there should be a staff council in every school by law. The government obviously consulted on some of these recommendations and this was one of the very few which were not implemented.
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