Governance and management in schools – the challenges of the Board of Trustees environment

Address by James Crichton

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The key relationship

1.????????? The central relationship in any school is between the Principal and the Chair of the Board.? On that relationship pivots the rest of the relationships within the school.?

2.????????? That relationship is so important because it is the contact point between the management of the school as an institution focused on teaching and learning, and the governance role provided by the Board of Trustees under the leadership of its Chair.

3.????????? It should be a given that the Principal is a well-rounded professional educator who is committed to the successful development of their school.

4.????????? What is not always a given is that the Board Chair necessarily has the skillset or the experience to enter into and develop a wholesome professional relationship with the Principal.

5.????????? Board members seek the role for a variety of reasons, not all of them positive, and while the vast majority of persons offering themselves as candidates do so with the best of motives, it does not necessarily follow that they are always equipped with the range of skills and/or the experience to fulfil an appropriate role as a trustee.

6.????????? While Board members will typically seek to elect as their Chair the individual who is perceived to have the most experience, that will not always be the case especially where there is a perception that the school is failing in some particular respect.

7.????????? In my opinion, the signal weakness of the Board of Trustees system is that almost by definition, persons occupying that role do so as a consequence of a familial relationship with a student at the school and so their participation in the governance of the school can be partial, rather than impartial.

8.????????? Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that it is the only corporate model in our society where we deliberately encourage candidates for governance roles, who are by definition may not be impartial.

9.????????? My own experience illustrates the point.? When my children were small, I became involved in the governance role at the primary school that my children attended.? My interest in the role was driven exclusively by my anxiety about the school performance of one of my children.? So instead of being there for the wider and more honourable purpose of seeking to provide impartial and balanced governance to the local school, my focus was on my failing child and what I might be able to do in the governance role to contribute to improving that state of affairs.

10.?????? In addition to that example of entirely partisan governorship, sadly there is also an inclination for some folk to become involved in Board of Trustees affairs not because they seek to participate impartially in governance at a local community school or even because they are concerned about the performance of a student who is a blood relation, but rather because they have a negative view about the teaching profession or the curriculum being taught.

11.?????? These warriors form particular world views of what should or should not be happening in a school environment, and create further challenges for normal governance and management, which will make the Principal’s job all the harder, if the Board is unbalanced by a plethora of these special interest players.

Tips on making that relationship work

12.?????? All the Principal can concern herself with in terms of relationship building is the relationship between her on the one hand and the Board Chair on the other.? As I observed above that relationship is fundamental to the successful operation of the school and ignoring it and the health of that relationship is fatal to the successful prosecution of a school’s programme.

13.?????? All of the Principal’s energy needs to be focused on making the relationship with the Chair work so that a collaborative working relationship ensues, even where there are fundamental differences of view.

14.?????? Because the Principal cannot choose who the Board Chair will be, it is imperative that the Principal understands that a key part of her role is to build a collaborative joint vision with the Chair of the Board.? Without that joint vision, the relationship is always going to be problematic and thus it will impact negatively on the performance of the school as a teaching and learning institution, and on the career progression of the Principal.

15.?????? Principals cannot assume that a Board Chair, particularly a new Board Chair, necessarily knows what they should do in the role or indeed what a wholesome relationship actually looks like in the school environment.? Just as in any other relationship, someone must take the lead.? ?The field will usually be open to the Principal to promote and encourage a wholesome relationship.? This can be done by assertively promoting good relationship habits which might include regular, timed meetings, perhaps with a written and previously circulated agenda. In addition, ?a degree of assertiveness from the Principal to ensure that the distinctions between governance and management are well inculcated will always be desirable..

16.?????? Of course, that dichotomy between the role of the governor and the role of the manager is absolutely front and centre in any school/Board relationship, and having a Board Chair constantly interfering in management issues is something that the Principal must be determined to stamp out.

17.?????? This need not be done unpleasantly but it needs to be sufficiently assertive to make the necessary point.

18.?????? If the Principal is sufficiently concerned about the behaviour of the Board Chair or indeed the wider Board members, then proposing training modules of the sort provided by the New?Zealand School Trustees Association for instance, is always a good suggestion.?

19.?????? Of course, many schools are well served by their Board and particularly by the Board Chair who understands the role from experience and works happily and collaboratively with the Principal for the greater good of the school institution.

20.?????? But it is often a case that when those successful relationships come to an end, typically because a Board member has literally had enough of the role or because the vicissitudes of the electoral process result in a successful Board Chair not being re-elected,? the Principal will need to engage with a new person in the role of Chair and should not be afraid to assertively manage that relationship for best advantage for the whole school community.

The challenging Board member

21.?????? I have already referred to the two types of challenging Board member that I think are most commonly found in Boards of our schools.? The first is the partisan Board member who is there because little Johnny is not doing well at school and the parent or guardian of the child is seeking to involve themselves so as to “assist” little Johnny’s education.

22.?????? Of course, that is entirely wrong-headed because there is little or nothing that a person in a governance role can do to facilitate improving the educational outcomes for a single student, save at a very macro level, like for example raising extra funds for extra facilities or encouraging extra training for staff in relevant areas.

23.?????? Put shortly, the outcomes for an individual student will be determined by the ability or otherwise of that student and the ability or otherwise of the teachers that that student engages with.? Where there is a problem in that teaching and learning environment, it is most unlikely that that problem will be able to be addressed from the position of a Board member.

24.?????? Of course, what the Principal needs to do in trying to address issues relating to the academic performance of a single student, whose involvement is being actively monitored by a Board member, is to try to work with that Board member, through the Board Chair, to satisfy the Board member that the student’s achievement is receiving the school’s active attention and that everything that can be done is being done.

25.?????? The aim of the exercise should be to neutralise the anxiety of the Board member about the performance of the student in the hope of turning the Board member into a useful and more dispassionate governor, rather than a partisan advocate for a particular child.

26.?????? The other category of challenging Board member that I have already referred to briefly is the single-issue member who may have negative views about teachers in general, or the curriculum, or has a bee in their bonnet for some other special interest reason.

27.?????? In my experience, these folk can be difficult to manage and as with the obsessive parent member, the key task for the Principal is to try to get the Chair of the Board on side, with an appropriate and balanced response to any single issue matters that come from a Board member.

28.?????? Of course, the position can magnify if there are a number of such people elected to a Board.? This does happen in some Board of Trustee elections where a number of people with single interests get elected to the same Board and each seek to promote their particular viewpoint.? Again, the only thing that the Principal can do is to rely on the good offices of the Board Chair and work collaboratively with the Board Chair to neutralise any negative consequences of having special interest people on the Board of Trustees.

29.?????? At its core, if the Principal can satisfy the Board Chair that the key aspects of governance are around dispassionate debate and determination of broad policy objectives for the school and are not about pursuing special interests of any description, then the Board Chair will be an ally of the Principal and will help to keep the balance of the Board focused on their central obligations.

Weaknesses in the Board of Trustee system

30.?????? The late Prime Minister, the Right Honourable David Lange, MP when he left office as Prime Minister, was also the Minister of Education, and is supposed to have thought that the new Board of Trustees system was his greatest legacy.

31.?????? I prefer to think of his greatest legacy in any number of other directions as my own view of the Board of Trustees system is that it is very much an imperfect tool.

32.?????? For reasons which I hope that I have already made clear, I think that while the aspirations of the creator of the Board of Trustees system was to provide for a level of community participation, the problems with the implementation of that principle may be to have involved people in the process of teaching and learning when they are not suitably trained or experienced enough to contribute adequately to that process.

33.?????? At worst, an untrained and inexperienced Board will impede the work of the school and therefore the learning of its students and create continuing challenges for the professional leader of the school such that she is taken away from more important tasks.

34.?????? It is fair to observe that when the Board of Trustees system works well, it can assist the development of a school in its community.? But I am satisfied there is ample evidence that when it works badly, it is a drain on the school and its achievements.? A particular difficulty I think with the Board of Trustees model is that not all communities are equal, and while more affluent communities will be able to attract people to the Board with a range of skills that will be of use to the school community, poorer communities are unlikely to have those resources within their immediate environments.

35.?????? As a consequence of that reality, there can be significant differences in the performance of Board of Trustees between successful schools in affluent areas on the one hand, and schools, whether successful academically or not, in less affluent areas.

36.?????? As somebody who has worked extensively in the school system including in commissioner and limited statutory manager roles, I may have a jaundiced view because much of my involvement has been in schools that have been perceived to be failing their students, but my continuing role now as a professional working in schools continues to highlight the challenges of getting and maintaining a good Board.

Addressing those weaknesses

37.?????? I think there needs to be a rethink of the Board of Trustees system and I incline to the view that a better model than the one that we have currently would be to create a single Board for a cluster of schools that were geographically co-located.

38.?????? That cluster might include primary and secondary schools and potentially intermediate schools as well, but the participation of educational institutions in each cluster would depend on geography and common sense.

39.?????? For example, I was for a time commissioner of Kaikoura High School.? The high school served a relatively easily delineated catchment with a scattering of primary schools which fed their kids into the high school system.

40.?????? Because the population base was small, the ability to get talented people to serve on Boards of Trustees of each of those schools within that geographical area was limited and challenging.? It seemed to me that a much better system would be rather than to have a single board for the high school and single boards for each of its contributing primary schools, there might be a district board which represented the community and provided overall governance of the schools in the district.

41.?????? The Principal reporting into that Board could be one of the Principals of the district schools, and that role could be rotated on say a yearly basis such that the Principal responsible to the district board would be in receipt of an additional salary component because of the additional work associated with the interface with the Board.

42.?????? It seems to me that such a structure would produce two beneficial outcomes.? The first is that it would enable a small community to recruit the necessary skill sets on one Board, rather than half a dozen, and the second is that by its very remoteness from individual schools, the Board would be less inclined to interfere in management roles.

43.?????? Similarly, in poorer communities, in say big cities, it would be easier to get the spread of talent that was needed to provide appropriate governance if there was a single Board working with all of the schools in a district or suburb, rather than each school having its own separate Board.

What happens when the Board is replaced?

44.?????? A statutory intervention will only happen where the Ministry of Education have reasonable grounds for concern about the operation of the school or the welfare or education performance of its students.

45.?????? The intervention can involve the complete replacement of the Board by a Commissioner or it can simply involve the appointment of a Limited Statutory Manager (LSM), who will be appointed to the Board of Trustees of the subject school with particular responsibility for some area or areas.? Typically, LSMs have been given responsibility for financial matters or for human resources matters.

46.?????? When the Board is replaced by a Commissioner, the new key relationship for the good health of the school becomes the relationship between the Principal and the Commissioner.

47.?????? If the intervention involves an LSM rather than a Commissioner, then the Principal will need to develop a good working relationship with the LSM, as well as continuing the existing relationship with the Board Chair.?

48.?????? Often in a statutory intervention, staff, including senior staff, will move on.? Sometimes that move will be precipitated by the statutory intervener.? Successful interventions are more likely to involve private confidential arrangements made to ensure the dignity of departing staff rather than litigation and public unpleasantness.?

49.?????? But assuming that you are part of the continuing staff team? once a statutory intervention starts, you should see the intervention as a stepping stone to a more successful school and as a building block to obtaining resources from the Crown which might not otherwise be available.

50.?????? While government departments hate giving out money that they have not budgeted to spend, (and there is a tendency on the part of the Ministry of Education to see statutory interventions as being in that category), it is nonetheless a fact that schools which are operating under a statutory intervention are, by definition troubled and it is a short step from that label to the need to fund new projects or seek additional funding for existing works.

51.?????? By virtue of their role and the nature of the skills that will have resulted in their being appointed, statutory intervenors are usually able influencers and having been appointed by the Ministry of Education, that will know the people to talk to in order to promote additional funding.

52.?????? Statutory intervenors come in a variety of shapes and sizes.? Sadly some seem to have a default setting of being anti the teaching profession and they will always be difficult for the Principal to work with.

53.?????? If you are lucky with your statutory intervenor, you will be working with somebody who is there because they want to make a difference to teaching and learning and assuming that is the position, a good relationship with that individual is ultimately going to be of assistance to your school and potentially to you in your career development.

54.?????? As a teaching professional, being involved in a statutory intervention is not necessarily a kiss of death professionally, and surviving an intervention and coming out the other end with an improved educational environment in your school will likely stand you in good stead in the future.

55.?????? At its heart, statutory intervention is for a particular purpose.? The Crown will have identified a deficit of some sort which requires remedying in order to enable teaching and learning to prosper.

56.?????? If an LSM is appointed, it will be self-evident what that person’s role is because the nature of the appointment will identify the perceived deficit.? As I have already noted, typically LSMs are appointed either with a human resourcing focus or a financial focus.

57.?????? With a commissionership, the Commissioner replaces the whole Board. Sometimes the resignation of the whole Board precipitates the Ministry’s invoking of a statutory intervention, and sometimes the Ministry, by appointing a commissioner, has the effect of causing the Board to be disestablished.? Either way, the Ministry will not intervene using these sweeping powers unless it decides that there has been a complete failure of governance in the school.?

58.?????? What the Commissioner will be doing from day one will be identifying a list of issues that have to be addressed and fixed, because the ultimate aim of the commissionership is to make the statutory intervention as short as possible and to replace the intervention with an elected Board.

59.?????? Statutory intervenors have a better ability to deal with problems by virtue of their statutory powers than a volunteer Board of Trustees and you can expect the statutory intervenor to develop a work programme that identifies what needs to change and how that is to be done.

60.?????? Sometimes, the professional leader of the school may have fallen out with her community, for whatever reason, and so the employment relationship has irretrievably broken down. ??Sometimes, there is a breakdown in the relationship between the Principal and her staff.? Sometimes there are real failures of professional leadership in the delivery of the curriculum. Whatever the cause of that breakdown, it need not necessarily reflect on the competence of the person involved but may actually reflect negatively on the inadequacy of the relationship with the Board or even the unreasonable nature of a school community.

61.?????? Most commonly though, senior staff only leave a school during a statutory intervention because of a relationship breakdown of some sort.? The message is clear that front and centre of all your professional activities within the school must be the development and maintenance of wholesome relationships with students, parents and staff.

62.?????? Where the employment relationship of the Principal or other senior staff member has irretrievably broken down, statutory intervention is likely to be directed at assisting that person to severe the relationship appropriately and in a confidential way, to enable the effected staff member to move on to new challenges.

63.?????? The fact that a senior manager of a school has been caught up in a statutory intervention need not necessarily be career damaging if it is handled discreetly and appropriately..

Making the most of the statutory intervention

64.?????? Senior managers in schools affected by statutory intervention need not see the intervention as a crisis but should rather view it as an opportunity.?

65.?????? On the one side, there may be an opportunity to sever the existing employment and move on to new opportunities but on the other, the school that is subject to the intervention may materially change as a consequence of the work of the statutory intervenor.

66.?????? There will be opportunities professionally for engagement with the intervention process, for learning from the statutory intervenor, and ensuring that you get the best that you can from the intervention both for the school and for you professionally.? That is achieved by creating a dynamic and wholesome relationship with the statutory intervenor and by helping that person to get their job done as quickly as possible so that the school community can return to the governance of its own school as soon as is reasonably possible.

67.?????? It is also worth remembering that statutory interventions in New Zealand schools are relatively uncommon.? At any one time there are about 70 or 80 statutory interventions happening across the country.? Given the total number of schools that we have in New Zealand, that is a very small percentage of the total school network.?

Summary and conclusions

68.?????? I have expressed some doubt about the utility of the current Board of Trustees environment and suggested? an alternative structure which might both reduce the ability of Board members to interfere in management on the one hand, and create a larger pool from which to draw the necessary skills that a Board will need, on the other.

69.?????? I have emphasised the importance of the key role between the Principal on the one hand and the Chair of the Board on the other.? In the alternative, where the school is under statutory intervention, I have emphasised the need for the Principal to form a positive working relationship with either a Commissioner or an LSM.

70.?????? I have emphasised the primacy of wholesome relationship building as a central tenet of principalship, not just as between Principal and Board Chair but also as between Principal and staff, students, and the parent community.

71.?????? Because the importance of the development of a wholesome relationship between Board Chair and Principal is the central plank on which a successful school is built and sustained, the leadership in that relationship must come from the professional leader of the school who should be prepared to deal assertively with errors by the Board in lapsing into management areas but also promote good behaviour by encouraging training resources to ensure that the Board is as capable as it can be.

James Crichton

Barrister

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