I’M a fairly new governor, so I have really studied the latest regulations from the Department for Education and Employment. I’m very shocked that some of my fellow members take rules so lightly, and sometimes do things that are just not right without even the head correcting them. What bothers me is I’ve become the object of unkind teasing because I sometimes quote the regulations when something is about to be done wrong. Surely these things matter?
PEOPLE should not regard the governor who wants to do things properly as an object of teasing.
Probably they don’t mean it unkindly but are in part covering their own embarrassment about not knowing.The head should know better. So should your clerk and your chair.
This job brings me into contact with so many cases where really bad things have happened as a result of rules being ignored that I’m now convinced that they are mostly very good and important rules, ad protect us against a range of dirty tricks that you’d never believe if I disclosed them.
But to practicalities. You could have a word with your chair or your clerk about how the blanket of ignorance could be lifted. A good clerk could circulate a summary of the regulation concerned (using the DFEE Guide to the Law) whenever it is relevant to an agenda item, with the agenda, for instance.
Or suggest in the first meeting this term that something be done to remind you all about the content of the latest regulations. It would relieve you of your role if you could organise some other source of information. And there’s no shortage now of simple summaries. I’ve already put one into a couple of new books myself and I’m sure there are others. There’s also certainly to be one, for instance, in the excellent Governors’ Yearbook from Adamson Books and I believe the Year 2000 issue of that is due out very soon.
