Kevin Greatorex has been a governor of three Northamptonshire schools since 1984. Last year he finished a governorship at Moulton comprehensive and took a co-opted vacancy in Overstone County Primary. He also chairs Boughton County Primary where he has been a parent governor and Tory local education authority governor. Motivated to become a governor when his daughters started school he says: “If you want to be involved, you can’t do it from the outside.”
Formerly a training manager for AngliaNationwide Building Society before taking early retirement five years ago, he is now a lay Office for Standards in Education inspector.
Kevin’s OFSTED work offers him a wider perspective. “The complications of education finance make it impossible for the layman to know whether schools get a fair deal. Governing bodies are full of people with the best intentions. They want to do the best for pupils. They face the same funding problems. As amateurs they do a good job overall. In most cases they are strongly directed by school management. The governors’ finance role links with the total management function. But governors should be given the financial resources with which to do the job. It has all been lean meat with nothing for luxuries. Most schools have been working hand to mouth in the past two years.”
Kevin favours a change in local management funding formulae. “We need to make a distinction between small schools, which need extra support, and large schools. I’d like more money in the system to support primary schools, without it being taken from the secondary sector.”
