The new education White Paper seeks to further sideline parents, warns Jon Richards

The recently passed Education and Adoption Act 2016 and the new White Paper, Education Excellence Everywhere (the name seemingly a tortured hat tip to Tony Blair’s “education, education, education”) suggests that the government wants parents out of the way.

The Act removes the need to consult parents if a “coasting” school is forced to become an academy, ostensibly because a few noisy anti-academy campaigns had slowed down or stopped a small number of conversions. The proposals in the White Paper go even further by stripping out the role of parent-governor.

The government, put onto the backfoot by the outcry from parents, governors and even some of its own MPs, has rapidly moved to try to mollify its critics, insisting it is not removing the ability for schools to appoint parent-governors, just the requirement to do so.

As this didn’t appear to satisfy the critics, the government is now kite-flying ideas that would mean making academies engage in “more meaningful engagement” including “parent councils”. So, once more we have an ill-thought-through initial announcement, followed by sticking plaster adjustments that could cause more work for academies than had the announcement not been made in the first place.

The government has been keen for some time to change the shape of school governance, with a preference for smaller “business-style” governing boards. However, a few years back the Department for Education did some research into governing bodies, which showed that the size of the governing body has little impact on outcomes.

So with a lack of evidence, why push the small corporate-style board as the solution? There are plenty of examples in business of where such boards have failed. And we have seen the failure of some multi-academy trust (MAT) boards to spot or intervene in poor performance, financial failure and even malpractice.

In the past couple of years, UNISON has twice had to refer national sponsored MATs to the Education Funding Agency for “contentious” practice, which a good board would have queried.

This is not to say that there have not been failures of governing bodies of maintained schools, but surely if we are building a new governance system we should seek to make it more effective?

Occasionally, I get called to give evidence to the Education Select Committee, normally on a wet Wednesday. My last appearance was at one of their hearings on academies. It was a lively knockabout event that saw the then chair of the committee Graham Stuart MP engage in his favourite sport: teaching union baiting.

When I managed to crowbar a sentence into the sparring, I said I thought it important that parent governors brought some skills to governing boards. This was picked up by Neil Carmichael, who has now taken over as chair. He was keen on my point, but didn’t follow it up when I said I didn’t see that there was any contradiction between having a parent-governor and wanting them to have relevant skills.

Unsurprisingly, the National Governors Association is perturbed at moves to disenfranchise parents. Its response to the White Paper said that it “thinks that parents of children and young people studying at a school bring an important perspective to the governance of schools that others are unlikely to bring” and that “elections provide a useful device for ensuring that those with different views are able to join boards”.

And there’s the rub: those with different views. They are a pain aren’t they? Sometimes they get in the way, they ask bloody awkward questions and they slow things down. Well, it’s called challenge and it is essential to ensuring balanced and robust decision-making. It’s a good thing. Long live the (good) parent-governor.