I MUST admit that as a governor I have led a somewhat sheltered life. I try to keep up to date with legislation and we have all our statutory committees in place, but mercifully the big issues many governors have to deal with - exclusions, competency procedures, redundancies, serious weaknesses - have passed me by. Running a beetle drive was my most harrowing experience last year.
So when a new guide for governors appears, I read it conscientiously, but tend to skim over the tough stuff, rather as a new parent I read baby manuals but skipped the parts about tantrums, croup and fits. No point in meeting trouble halfway. We have occasional problems with governors with private axes to grind, but on the whole we seem to get off fairly lightly.
Dozing pleasantly through the latest Information for School and College Governors manual between Christmas and the New Year, I snapped awake on reading this passage on dealing with rogue governors.
“The threat of calling a policeman to the meeting should be a sufficient deterrent to wild and unmanageable behaviour.” Was this slipped into my review copy to check that I was paying attention, or are other people’s governors’ meetings really like this?
I must get out more.
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