Taylor (1977)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Preface, Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Present arrangements for school government
Chapter 3 A new approach to school government
Chapter 4 Membership of the new governing bodies
Chapter 5 Communication and cooperation
Chapter 6 Curriculum
Chapter 7 Finance
Chapter 8 Appointments
Chapter 9 Other functions
Chapter 10 Training the new governors
Chapter 11 Procedural arrangements
Chapter 12 The government of voluntary schools
Chapter 13 Recommendations and implementation
Summary of recommendations

Notes of extension and dissent, minority report

Appendix A Evidence
Appendix B History of school managers and governors
Appendix C Visits
Appendix D Education Act 1944: selected extracts
Appendix E Administrative Memorandum No 25 (1945)
Appendix F Letter to parents
Appendix G Aims into practice

Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed jointly by the Secretary of State for Education and Science and the Secretary of State for Wales under the chairmanship of Mr Tom Taylor CBE

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1977
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 3 A new approach to school government
[pages 13 - 19]

3.1 In this chapter we consider possible approaches to the management and government of county (1) schools in England and Wales in the future and set out our general conclusions.

The range of options

3.2 Four possible courses were open for consideration:

i. to retain the existing arrangements for school management and government unchanged;

ii. to reform, to a greater or lesser extent, present practice and procedures within the existing arrangements;

iii. to replace the existing arrangements with an alternative system of school government;

iv. to abolish the existing arrangements putting nothing in their place.

Evidence

3.4 Very few witnesses urged the abolition of managing and governing bodies. The National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NAS/UWT) and the National Association of the Teachers of Wales (NATW) considered such bodies to be superfluous to the proper conduct of a school's affairs. This, they argued, could and should be left to the local education authority (as the elected body responsible for the running of the schools in its area) and the head teacher and his colleagues (as the professionally trained and qualified people appointed to teach in the schools). Both associations believed that provision would have to be made to facilitate communication between members of the community served by the school and its teachers and the local education authority. For this purpose the NAS/UWT recommended the formation of community consultative committees, the NATW the election of parent advisory bodies.

3.5 Very similar conclusions were reached by the small number of witnesses who argued that managing and governing bodies should lose their executive functions and have a purely advisory or consultative role. Proponents of this view included the Association of Education Committees, the Welsh Joint Education Committee, the National Association for Multiracial Education and the Professional Association of Teachers. Apart from these proposals in favour of advisory or consultative bodies, we received very few submissions suggesting alternative approaches to school government. Most of these turned out to be little more than new names for old concepts.

3.6 The overwhelming majority of witnesses agreed that the present pattern of school government should be continued. They recognised - explicitly or implicitly - a need for county schools to have associated with them bodies of interested persons concerned for their welfare. Whilst differing in their views about the membership, responsibilities, powers and even the basic purpose of such bodies, these witnesses placed their varied proposals for reform and improvement within the context of the existing framework of school management and government. Indeed many of their proposals are already established practice in different parts of England and Wales. Drawing attention to this and to the wide scope for advance and development under existing arrangements, the Advisory Centre for Education argued 'for an extension throughout the system of the good practice which is already established in some parts of it'. Although rarely stated so explicitly, this belief in the potential of today's managing and governing bodies underlay the bulk of our evidence in favour of reforming (or perhaps, more correctly, revitalising) the present arrangements.

The Committee's views

3.7 In examining the evidence and considering possible approaches to school government in the future, our starting point was to establish whether there is a need, over and above those which can be met by the local education authority and by the head teacher and his staff, to be satisfied by a body entrusted with specific responsibility for a particular school.

3.8 We believe that there is such a need, namely to ensure that the school is run with as full an awareness as possible of the wishes and feeling of the parents and the local community and, conversely, to ensure that these groups are, in their turn, better informed of the needs of the school and the policies and constraints within which the local education authority operates and the head and other teachers work.

3.9 To meet this need we believe that all the parties concerned for a school's success - the local education authority, the staff, the parents and the local community - should be brought together so that they can discuss, debate and justify the proposals which any one of them may seek to implement. We recognise that cooperation for the good of the school can and does take place between these interests both formally and informally on both an advisory and a consultative basis. We consider it necessary to go beyond this and propose that all the parties should share in making decisions on the organisation and running of the school since; in our view, this is the best way of ensuring that every aspect of the life and work of the school comes within the purview of all the interests acting together. The specific functions to be undertaken by our proposed partnership are considered in detail in chapters 6 to 9.

3.10 We believe that present managing and governing bodies could be reshaped and adapted to act as the means of conducting our proposed partnership. The remainder of this chapter sets out the basic changes we consider necessary if they are to be able to do this effectively.

Powers and responsibilities

3.11 The first such change, which will set the framework within which we wish the new bodies to operate, is designed to eliminate confusion about the general basis on which the exercise of decision making powers is distributed between local education authorities, governing bodies and head teachers.

3.12 The present arrangements for the distribution of power and responsibility have been widely criticised as imprecise and unrealistic. To some extent these criticisms relate to the forms of words employed in articles of government, but they also stem from the difficulty in some respects of reconciling the apparent intentions of the 1944-45 arrangements with the practical realities of running a maintained school. Section 17(3)(b) of the Act, in providing for every secondary school to be conducted in accordance with articles of government, allows for some powers, in relation to county secondary schools at least, to be conferred directly and absolutely on both the governing body and the head teacher: the provisions of the 1945 model articles were intended to give effect to this. It was always accepted that such powers are not, and cannot properly be, exercised without regard to the responsibilities of the local education authority. It follows that the divisions of responsibility laid down in the articles could never be hard and fast. As a consequence there was in practice a blurring of responsibilities and over the thirty or more years that have elapsed since 1944 this blurring of responsibilities was aggravated, to some extent, by the imprecision of the language of certain of the articles but even more by the factors which we have noted in chapter 2.

3.13 Mr Auld, in the Tyndale report (2), pointed to a similar blurring of responsibilities in the case of primary schools, where the managers are given certain powers and responsibilities by the rules of management. But, as Mr Auld pointed out, notwithstanding the popular confusion which this seems to have caused about where the ultimate power and the final responsibility lie, the rules themselves are made - and can be unmade and remade - at the will of the local education authority.

3.14 We do not think this position is satisfactory. As a basis for considering the major functions which we should wish to see undertaken by governing bodies in the future, we have accepted two general propositions. The first is based on a recognition that the general statutory duties of the local education authority with regard to the provision of education in its area - duties which it has not been open to us to question - place upon the local education authority the ultimate responsibility for the running of the schools in its area. This proposition is in three parts:

a. the local education authority is responsible for the provision and efficient conduct of county schools and so must be empowered to prescribe general policies and issue general directions, and must have, if it thinks fit, the final word on any matter affecting the exercise of its statutory duties for such schools;

b. subject to the overriding functions of the local education authority, the governing body should be in a position to determine the lines on which the particular school is organised and run;

c. many day to day decisions must in practice be made by the head and staff of the school.

3.16 There should be provision for appropriate delegation of these powers by the local education authority to the governing body. The latter would expect the head teacher to run the school on a day to day basis, normally dealing directly with the LEA's officers but aware, especially when the need for a critical decision arose, that his powers derived from the local education authority through the governing body. This approach should facilitate the definition of a clear and straightforward line of responsibility and authority running from the local education authority through the governing body and the head to every person engaged in the running of the school. It does not follow that the local education authority and its officers should make, or be concerned in, or even know about every decision made in the school. The governing body and the head teacher must clearly be given, on a formal and secure basis, a substantial measure of discretion if proper respect is to be had to their position and potentialities and if the school is to be run efficiently and satisfactorily.

3.17 We cannot lay down, in terms which would be both precise and generally valid, the extent of delegation which would be appropriate in any particular field. As a guiding principle we RECOMMEND that there should be as much delegation by the local education authority to the governing body as is compatible with the LEA's ultimate responsibility for the running of the schools in its area, and as much discretion in turn granted to the head teacher by the governing body as is compatible with the latter's responsibility for the success of the school in all its activities. As we make clear in chapters 6 to 9, when we consider in detail the functions of governing bodies, this general principle should in certain respects be expressly reinforced, while in a few other respects its application should be limited.

3.18 Our recommendations on these matters will involve substantial changes in the law and the present apparatus of rules, articles and instruments of government and management, and in the role to be played in the future by the Secretaries of State. These issues are discussed in chapter 13.

Separate bodies for each school

3.19 Section 20 of the Education Act 1944 empowers local education authorities to group any two or more county or voluntary schools (subject in the latter case to the managers' or governors' agreement) under a single governing body.

3.20 The 1944 White Paper explained some of the circumstances in which it was felt that the grouping of schools under a single governing body would be necessary. There had been an increase in the number of secondary schools and it could be convenient to link together schools of a particular foundation or denominational character. There were advantages in grouping schools on a geographical basis, with schools of all types finding a place in the group. It was hoped that the problems of self-government in the (then) newer types of secondary schools would benefit from shared experience and community of interest and that sharing of teaching staff and transfer of pupils between the various types of school would be facilitated. Over the years other reasons for grouping arrangements have emerged. It has sometimes been found convenient for one group of governors to take responsibility for two or three very small schools in a rural community or for two schools which share the same site. More recently there has been a tendency in some areas to constitute a single governing body for a comprehensive secondary school and its feeder primary schools, or to appoint a joint body for a two-tier secondary school where compatibility of syllabuses is regarded as particularly important.

3.21 There are however, disadvantages in such arrangements. When a number of schools are grouped together it is often necessary, in order to provide for a wide variety of interests, for very large governing bodies to be established; these can be cumbersome and impersonal. The White Paper recognised the danger that grouping arrangements might tend to blur the individual character of each type of school. It has been argued strongly that the members of a group governing body cannot give proper consideration to the interests of any particular schools under their aegis, because they inevitably lack a personal identification with the school, a knowledge of its special needs in depth and a close understanding of its links with the local community. We recognise that the arguments in favour of grouping arrangements may have had some validity in the past but we are convinced, and we are strongly supported in this by the evidence, that they no longer hold good.

3.22 Our aim is to foster a working partnership which would give staff, parents and community an equal part with the local education authority in the government of their own schools. To be effective this partnership must operate in relation to individual schools; it must not be diffused by grouping arrangements. It is an essential feature of our proposals therefore that each school should have its own individual governing body.

3.23 We hope that grouping arrangements already made will be replaced as soon as possible by arrangements for separate governing bodies. We recognise, however, that local education authorities may need to ensure that there are opportunities for collaboration between the governing bodies of schools that are educationally linked (ie lower and upper secondary schools or secondary schools and feeder primary schools) so as to allow matters of common interest such as complementary courses to be considered. Ways and means of achieving this are considered in chapter 5.

3.24 We RECOMMEND that Section 20 of the Education Act 1944 should be repealed as soon as possible and that from a date to be fixed by the Secretaries of State every school should have its own separate governing body.

The new governing bodies

3.25 The distinction between the 'management' of primary schools and the 'government' of secondary schools is rooted to a considerable extent in history and in an older view of primary school education. In recent years, especially in the light of the Plowden (3) and Gittins Reports (4), there has been a much greater appreciation of its significance and a corresponding increase in the sophistication of its approach and methods. Moreover, the introduction of middle schools, spanning part of the primary and part of the secondary age range, has tended to blur the traditional distinction. For all these reasons we think it is not appropriate that the distinction should be preserved by general differences in the arrangements for the administration of primary and secondary schools. We are aware that on many particular points there remain important differences, but we believe that our recommendations take these fully into account and can be applied in general terms in schools of all age ranges without inhibiting differentiation of approach and emphasis where this is appropriate.

3.26 To reflect this approach we think, as did many of our witnesses, that an end should be made to the distinction between the 'management' of primary schools and the 'government' of secondary schools. We have given careful consideration to a number of alternative titles which some witnesses thought more appropriate for the responsible bodies, but we concluded that 'governing body', because of its long usage and wide acceptance, remains the most appropriate title. We therefore RECOMMEND its retention and its application by law to all bodies whether they serve primary or secondary schools. (5)

3.27 The new governing bodies should, like the existing managing and governing bodies, act as corporate bodies. Under our proposals in chapter 11 it will be for a governing body to decide upon its own procedures and standing orders. It might, at a properly constituted meeting, choose to delegate certain of its functions to one or more of its members but in performing those functions the individual governors would be acting on behalf of the governing body as a whole. We mention this expressly in view of the problems caused at the William Tyndale Junior School by managers acting individually and in factions (6). In the rest of this report all reference to the rights and responsibilities of the governing body should be read literally. It is the governors as a body that we have in mind.

Footnotes

(1) Voluntary schools are considered in chapter 12.

(2) See paragraph 1.10.

(3) Central Advisory Council for Education (England). Children and their Primary Schools. Chairman Lady Plowden JP. HMSO 1967.

(4) Central Advisory Council for Education (Wales). Primary Education in Wales. Chairman Professor CE Gittins. HMSO 1967.

(5) In the rest of this report, when we look to the future, the term governing body is used in respect of both primary and secondary schools.

(6) We endorse Mr Auld's conclusion, 'Whatever the managers decide to do, they should decide together, and by vote if necessary, at a properly constituted managers' meeting. There should be no decision taken by factions of the managing body. Nor should there be meetings between members of the managing body with the Authority's representatives to discuss the problem in the absence and without the knowledge of the chairman of the managers, or of the head teacher or the teacher-manager'. Para 834(i) of the report on the William Tyndale Junior and Infants Schools Public Inquiry.