THE best part of any governor training session is the opportunity to meet other governors and compare notes. My brief experience of delivering performance management training this term was no exception.
I met governors who saw performance management as a long-awaited chance to get thoroughly involved in the strategic management of their schools and others who were there resentfully, only because no one else was prepared to take the job on.
There were governors who swore their school had received no information at all - “What booklet?”- and those whose schools had such an efficient, established process in place for reviewing the head’s performance that they inignantly rejected the interference of an external adviser.
Some were in their first nervous year as governors, others were performance-management professionals in the real world, raring to put their schools to rights.
Pitching the training somewhere between informing the beginners and not patronising the experts was quite a challenge.
However, it’s comforting to know how highly governors are valued. At the height of the fuel crisis, my local education authority informed me that as a governor-trainer I was providing a public service and could claim priority petrol. “Let me through - I’m a school governor!”
I decided to stick with my bike.
