Governors spend a lot of time assessing how their school is led and managed, and are involved in ensuring that members of the senior team and heads of department are trained to take more responsibility, which also helps them to progress further in their career.
While there is a national focus on succession planning for school staff, it is very easy for governors to forget that they, too, should be spotting and developing the leadership potential of their own members. There is also no doubt that governors get much more out of their voluntary service if they are permitted to diversify and expand their responsibilities.
But how many times have you heard someone say that their chair of governors is the salt of the earth and "we don't know what we'd do without them"?
Now the National Coordinators of Governor Services (NCOGS), a national committee that represents local authority providers of services to school governors, has completed a project called Succession Breeds Success, which explores "how to grow leaders in your governing body".
The guidance includes sections on being an effective chair and developing the role of one or more vice-chairs. As well as standing in for the chair and sharing his or her workload, NCOGS also suggests the vice can be a mentor for new governors and someone who can boost the effectiveness of school governance by talking to other governors and identifying areas of improvement.
There are several actions and strategies to help governors to take on additional responsibility. There are also sections on attracting and helping new governors so that their skills and talents can be spotted and, with the help of mentors, they can shed their hesitancy about being "new" and quickly take on a full role.
NCOGS also reveals that many of the factors listed by the National Council for School Leaders (NCSL) as reasons why teachers don't want to become heads also apply to governors when they are offered the opportunity to become chair.
It wants governors to share and debate the information it has provided, evaluate what their school does, and write a plan for succession. "Traditionally we tend to think of leadership of the governing body as being vested in the chair (and perhaps the vice-chair). However, for a governing body to be truly effective and guard against the impact of rapid change it, too, needs to distribute leadership."
· Succession Breeds Success can be downloaded at www.ncogs.org.uk
