Governors for Schools has been handed a two-year £879,000 contract to deliver FE’s governor recruitment service.
The Department for Education contract win marks a return by the charity to the delivery of free FE recruitment services after it lost a similar contract in 2016 under its old name of School Governors’ One-Stop Shop.
The service helps colleges with difficult-to-fill governor vacancies and provides bespoke help for those in intervention.
Peridot Partners, an education recruitment firm, had delivered the scheme since 2020.
Governors for Schools already offers a free governor recruitment service to schools and academy trusts, and a paid “enhanced recruitment service” for all education providers, including colleges.
Its chief executive Hannah Stolton told FE Week it bid for the contract so the charity could deliver a free service for colleges.
“We have historically been able to offer it free to colleges, but we are having to charge now, so that was a key driver,” she said. “And we want to be able to offer it to all colleges, not just those that can afford to pay.
“We’re in the position now where we absolutely need to be sustainable going forward, like many charities so this contract came at the right time for us.”
Stolton said the organisation currently fills around 20 FE governor vacancies a year and has “quite a number” of vacancies on its books from colleges seeking the charity’s paid service.
The DfE service is only available to FE corporations, sixth-form college corporations and designated institutions that are referred to the scheme by DfE officials.
Colleges in intervention, receiving FE commissioner help, or that are located in remote areas will get a fast-track referral to the service.
Nominations for the referral can be made by the FE commissioner team, the DfE’s place-based teams, national leaders of further education or national leaders of governance.
Stolton said: “When we spoke to the DfE on Tuesday, they said, ‘some of these colleges are ones that we have put through the process before,’ so obviously, they are ones that have struggled historically.”
Governor recruitment targets
The contract, signed this week, will run for two years with the possibility of a one-year extension.
Stolton said the DfE has imposed a target of placing 20 per cent of roles with ethnic minority applicants and 50 per cent with women. Last year, Governors for Schools filled vacancies with 40 per cent of people from ethnic minorities.
“The service is designed to strengthen governance in colleges by supporting the recruitment of a diverse range of appropriately skilled and knowledgeable governors to key roles on governing boards,” the 2025 tender notice said.
The previous contract delivered by Peridot Partners was worth £458,000 and demanded the delivery of a minimum of 137 “well-matched, diverse and lasting” governor appointments across three financial years.
A pre-procurement notice, published in December, revealed the DfE was aiming “subject to budget availability” for the renewed service to recruit 210 governors over the contract term.
The official tender specified that the target was a minimum of 140 “appropriately skilled and diverse” governors across two years, with a minimum of 60 appointments in the first year.
Should the contract be extended for one year, Governors for Schools will have to place a minimum of 210 governors spread across the three years.
Stolton said she was “confident” they would meet the minimum targets as it placed 2,000 governors across the education sector last year and it has a team with FE college recruitment experience.This service replaced an earlier version called the inspiring FE governance matching service, launched by the Education and Training Foundation in 2017. The DfE had funded the scheme until 2021-22.
It’s great to see a renewed focus on diverse and skilled governor recruitment for FE colleges