With an eye to a change of government, the educational armies eye each other warily. The local education authorities have taken a stand on the return of their lost sovereignty; now the headteachers, through David Hart of the National Association of Head Teachers, are staking out similar ground. The principal targets of both groups are the responsibilities currently possessed by that bunch of stumbling amateurs, the school governors.

David Hart’s contribution to the debate (TES, January 20) was oddly lopsided - his proposals being limited mostly to personnel issues - and somewhat confused. He appears to argue that heads should be in total control, and then trumpets a set of demands that more or less describe the status quo.

And yet governors could be in for a tough battle since hardly anyone in education is in favour of maintaining, let alone developing, their powers. Research carried out at the National Foundation for Education Research by Peter Earley shows that not only a majority of heads, but even most governors, think they have too much responsibility.

Such wretched humility is severely misplaced. The case for local governance of schools is overwhelming. Compulsory education must constantly be questioned, constantly justified. Our collective decision to enforce schooling upon our children sentences them to a kind of imprisonment which is not always benevolent or effective. Schools possess the ability of all institutions to believe themselves entirely good and virtuous; we must insist on our right to require them to justify what they do to our children.

The immediate local supervision exercised by governing bodies is more responsive, more effective and more democratic than the arms-length, bureaucratic and politicised control of LEAs which have, with a few notable exceptions, failed to provide schools of adequate quality. Nor is it likely that there are 24,000 exceptional individuals who are capable of running our schools without counsel or supervision.

What we now have is not a bad system, but it does need adjustment. There is certainly an imbalance of power. Despite the firm legal basis of their role, many governors lack confidence hardly surprising as the head holds all the cards: control of information, knowledge of education and its jargon, familiarity with the issues, a full-time post, recognised status and a framework of support.

Governors need confidence and clear understanding at a specific level: the level of governance. The proper business of governance includes such matters as the purpose and nature of schools, the legitimate needs of communities and the characteristics of institutions. Governors need to understand the touchy semi-professional status of teachers. They must have available a range of ways of assessing school effectiveness and they must be confident in providing leadership, and initiating aims and policies. They lie at an interface between schools and society, that point at which a school explains and translates itself; to understand schools, governors do not have to speak education.

Inappropriate training has not helped. The job of training and supporting governors should never have gone to the LEAs they have no interest in the development of an independent philosophy of governance. Worse than that, their training has encouraged interference with management by being, in essence, the old LEA school management agenda writ small.

So far governors have failed to find the leadership that might enable them properly to fulfil their role. A year ago it seemed possible that the National Governors’ Council might be the nucleus of such a movement, but it allowed itself to be hijacked by the LEAs and is now saddled with an absurdly complex constitution.

However, there are still possibilities. A huge invasion force of parents and lay people, some 350,000 strong, landed stealthily on the shores of education in the late Eighties. This army still has considerable potential to transform our schools. It is just conceivable that a Labour government might be persuaded to encourage and promote the role of those governors.

As a first step it would need to establish governance as an independent discipline, quite separate from education management, and place governor education in the hands of a body which acts in the interests of effective governance alone. It is just possible that such a move might even be acceptable to quite a lot of NAHT members.

Martin Corrick is a chair of governors and is responsible for research and governor training at the department of adult continuing education, University of Southampton