 | | Question: I have just become a school governor. The current governing body have a great deal of mistrust and unhappiness with the headteacher. They are regularly fighting off complaints from parents about her, and when any inspectors come in the school, she puts on a performance to portray a happy well-run school. Of 90 children starting year 2, only 62 are moving up to the junior school because of the bad reputation. Can we put forward a vote of no confidence, and what would happen next?
Joan Sallis replies: Schools are abnormally vulnerable to the muttering disease. Unfortunately “mistrust and unhappiness” don’t get you very far, and often parent muttering dies away the minute people have to stand by what they said. The trouble is that these feelings are too unspecific to stand up in any kind of formal confrontation. This is very sad but that’s how it is.
Governors’ shouldn’t “fight off” parents wanting to criticise but encourage them to put any specific and serious complaints formally so that the issues themselves, and not a general feeling of dissatisfaction, can be discussed properly with the head. Sometimes a skilled chair can be very helpful in having a quiet word. The governing body has a right to ask for comments on incidents, judge whether parents are justified in their dissatisfaction, and respond appropriately even if that means expressing criticism of the headteacher’s style and asking for change. There is a procedure for a governing body to dismiss a head just as there is for them to appoint one, but it is a long and perilous road and can’t be negotiated on the basis of vague noises of dissatisfaction.
That doesn’t mean that I despair of a governing body having any influence, simply that things like votes of no confidence are often mooted and almost never implemented, mainly because of the amazing disappearance of complaints once they get beyond the muttering stage, and if you try to get any useful outcome out of muttering, the school is likely to get in serious and expensive trouble. Sorry not to be more encouraging but you may well make progress if you stick to specifics.
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