On the first day, conference chair Professor Bill Lucas and Exeter College principal Richard Atkins talked about the sector’s renewed focus on teaching and learning. Delegates also heard  more about the new Ofsted common inspection framework from senior inspector Beverley Barlow. They also took part in interactive and workshop sessions.

The major theme of the day was: given the enhanced status of teaching and learning, with the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning (CAVTL), the Ofsted framework, the massive increase in apprenticeships and the pressure to make sure that the pedagogy is right, what’s the role of governance in all of this?

The day explored how governing bodies can be more actively involved at an appropriate governance level, without dipping into management.

How can governors be strategic, ask the right questions but not end up doing the stuff that’s really an executive function?

One example that came out in the afternoon sessions was that traditionally at board meetings, you spend 70 per cent of your time talking about money, buildings and staff contracts and 30 per cent on learning, student voice and student engagement. Why not reverse it?

Governors were asking questions such as:  ‘I don’t really understand teaching and learning. When I went to school or college or university, it was very different so how would I know what good is?’ ‘How can we ensure that we have on our governing body the kind of breadth that would enable us to have the best advice on teaching and learning?’

Delegates also looked at the two strands which often exist in FE vocational teaching. There’s whatever the vocational subject is, whether it’s as a plumber or a hairdresser or an accountant or an engineer, and there’s the teaching bit.

To be outstanding you need to have an outstanding teacher with relevant recent experience in that particular vocation.

That arguably makes teaching and learning in a college in many ways more complex than academic teaching in a school. If you asked the man or woman in the street they’d probably say the reverse.

Day two opened with a funding and finance panel.

Here’s  some of the questions and answers from panellists Bobbie McClelland, deputy director at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Peter Lauener, chief executive of the Education Funding Agency, and Kim Thorneywork, chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency.

How can splitting funding into two sets of terms and conditions possibly be a simplification? 

KT: The two funding systems from the adult side and the young people’s side were designed to underpin different sets of priorities…

On the adult side we have only one set of terms and conditions, and part of the simplification was to move from two strands of funding, learner responsive and employer responsive, to a new system, with one set of funding rules and one set of terms and conditions.

Two years ago there was a huge pile of funding rules. We went to single document last year and we’re launching an interactive form because we do know, particularly for college governors and finance directors, that seeing the evidence requirements and the audit requirements against the funding requirements is important.

However, there is still more to do. We’ve been working with the education funding agency  to work towards a single financial memorandum for colleges.

What happens if FE loans are not taken up?

BM: We’ve done a lot of work in this area looking at the potential impact of loans.

We’ve asked individuals their views and we’ve had a very positive reception. When you then explain the terms and conditions, loans have been welcomed.

So we’re confident there is the capacity and inclination there for people to take it up. It does require the technology and that’s on track for delivery in the next few weeks, but it’s also dependent on providers and colleges engaging with learners for them to understand how to access loans.

Where will the money come from for 16 to 19 traineeships?

PL: Traineeships are not a new programme with a separate funding line — and introducing a separate funding bundle would be a really retrograde step. Funding is already in the system for 16 to 19 and we’re well advanced with the funding applications for 2013/14.

For 16 to 19, the principles of traineeships will be similar to those of study programmes.

But with the emphasis on work experience, and English and maths for those who didn’t get that at 16, with progression on to apprenticeships or jobs. The funding will be there.

Caption for featured image: Panel from the second day of the conference. From left: Professor Bill Lucas, from the University of Winchester, Kim Thorneywork, chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency, Peter Lauener, chief executive of the Education Funding Agency,  and Bobbie McClelland, deputy director at the Department for Business, Innovation And Skills.        Pictures by Andy Whitehead for FE Week 

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“Is small beautiful?” was the big question for a session called ‘Debating the smaller board’, chaired by Professor Bill Lucas, with contributions from, amongst others,  John Graystone, chief executive of Colegau Cymru, Jennifer Foot, clerk at Carlisle College, Sue Daley, director of the Women’s Leadership Network, and Carole Stott, chair of the Association of Colleges.

John Graystone (pictured above) introduced the debate with the key issues of the situation in Wales:

“The Welsh Assembly government… set up the Humphreys Review [in 2011] to look at corporations but also to explore… the accountability of governing bodies, and basically argued for smaller boards.

“His [Rob Humphreys, director for Wales at the Open University] view was that a smaller board would only work if you had a larger membership body to give accountability to the local community.

“The main criticism of governing bodies was ‘well who are you answerable to?’

“This was quite a simple model of governance, a smaller board of 10 to 12, that would include student and staff governors, drawn from a wide range expertise as they already are…

“It would be linked into a membership body, which Humphreys said should be from 25 to 50 people… Those in the membership group would have complementary expertise and their purpose would be to hold the board to account.

“The membership body would be appointed by an independent search committee and would challenge the board over the achievement of objectives.

“A number of colleges are very interested in taking forward this model… so we’re going to try this out and see if it will help to make colleges more closely linked to local communities.”

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Fintan Donohue, chief executive of North Herts College (pictured above), spoke about taking risks and entrepreneurial governance.

He said: “We all have different hopes for our colleges and my hopes are very much on the entrepreneurial focus and risk–taking, and the changes I believe many of us are going to have to embrace if we’re going add any real value to our communities.

“For those of us in the Gazelle group, we’re trying to focus on whether or not our role and the role of our boards are significantly more than the provision of publications, but actually about building wealth and opportunity and resources.

“My proposition is that … governing bodies have a legitimate role in questioning the quality not just of traditional pedagogy but actually the impact of what that teaching and learning is doing at community level…

“So the challenge I present  is ‘are we really thinking outside the traditional paradigms? Do we really need to start to debate what a truly entrepreneurial culture looks and feels like, that can add greater value to our community and make more of the resources we’ve got?’

“Our students… are not going to emerge into employment in any serious way… in the immediate future. Therefore their only future is to create their own wealth, confidence and employment in much larger numbers than they’ve ever had to do before.

“Therefore the challenge for us and our corporations I think is to say how do we make that happen?”

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Asha Khemka OBE, principal of West Nottinghamshire College speaking to Helen Pettifor, executive director of leadership and professional development

In her remarks to close the conference, Asha Khemka OBE, principal and chief executive of West Nottinghamshire College, said: “It’s been an amazing conference. You have been engaged with keen interest in debating the very pressing issues of our time.

“The spectrum of the topic we have debated has covered the full range of the challenges we face, the things we do well, and the things we need to do even better.

“In talking to groups of governors in the past few days, I have discovered a keen interest in being closer to teaching and learning, and to understand data.

“When I opened the conference, I outlined three key challenges: steering learning, steering impact, steering reputation. I am sure that you will agree  there has been full debate, and lots of exemplars are best practice in our sector.

“How do we make sure that dialogue continues? How do we make sure that there’s a framework in place to continue to support our governors and clerks?

“Some of you are well ahead of the game, with systems and processes in your colleges where you are closer to teaching and learning… Some of you are anxious and not clear how to ensure teaching and learning are right.  For that there is no quick answer but there are going to be regional teaching and learning workshops…

“On data… bring a group together sit down and look at what you are getting and ask ‘is this the right information? Does it show us destination and progression?…’

“What we need to be asking is ‘are we skilling our students for the right jobs? If we are going to be competing in the global market place, are we giving them the right skills and opportunities?’

“I hope moving forward you will reflect back on your journeys, what we have been able to debate and discuss at this conference, and I hope that you found the conference useful.”

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One of the most rousing speeches was given by Liam Burns, president of the National Union of Students (pictured above), on learner–led feedback.

“I was NUS president of Scotland, where 90 per cent of my time was spent… trying to assert parity of esteem between the college and university sectors,” he told delegates.

“Our post–16 system is riddled with strange assumptions that do us absolutely no good in the modern age… we compulsively rank our universities and colleges and compulsively ignore our FE sector… I want to argue for a truly tertiary education system that will shatter these false boundaries and the false oppositions between them.

“Why not further education after higher education? Why not the two at exactly the same time?… Is it really beyond us to enable people in this country to study a history degree and a BTec in management? …Other countries, other economies and other societies don’t believe so.”

He moved on to talk about student representation after New Challenges, New Chances.

“We had a fight to keep student membership of your corporations,” he said. “Some of you have reduced the number of student governors from two to one…. Some colleges changed it just because they can. Some of you don’t have proper student unions in your colleges, because you don’t have to…

“To those this applies to, I say: be careful. Just because you are free to do these things, doesn’t mean you should… just because you don’t have a curfew anymore, doesn’t mean you should stay out all night.

“Elected student unions are not a luxury they are a necessity.

“If you’re going to decry that we don’t have enough politicians who come from vocational backgrounds, if you’re going to rightly challenge that we don’t have enough sector leaders who know colleges inside out, then that responsibility is on your doorstep, because if you think you can do learner engagement simply by sending out surveys rather than engaging young people to be active leaders… then that’s not our fault, that’s yours.

“Could your time [as a governor] be about celebrating your place in taking tertiary education allowing those most disenfranchised in society to thrive? I think the answer… is yes.”

“Have you been sent here as a reward . . . or as a punishment?” Lorna Unwin asked more than 100 delegates at a LSIS leadership and management conference in London late last month.

Throughout the day, delegates heard how leadership could support excellent learning, and how to lead outstanding learning.

Professor Unwin, of the Institute of Education, examined leadership and learning from a slightly different perspective.

She pointed out that most delegates had actually come to the conference as an experience that was simultaneously working and learning.

“All workplaces are sites of learning – it doesn’t matter how big they are, how small they are, what they produce, what services they provide,” she said.

“Most people still tend to think learning only takes place in classrooms or in settings designed for learning.”

Professor Unwin urged delegates to think about what their workplace was like as a learning environment.

“Maybe you have never thought of it as a learning environment, except for students, trainees and clients,” she said.

“Our institutions are workplaces. But because their focus is on the learning of those they wish to serve, they tend not to be thought of as workplaces, and I think they’re the poorer for it.

“If colleges and providers thought of themselves as workplaces they could model what good workplaces would look like, and use those new ideas with the workplaces they send learners and apprentices to.”

Professor Unwin queried why some workplaces made better learning environments than others.

In the most expansive workplaces, the process of management is regarded as a form of pedagogy

“In the most expansive workplaces I have researched, the process of management is regarded as a form of pedagogy,” she said.

In one workplace, she had been told: “To create a learning environment we need our managers to understand how learning takes place, how to foster it and nurture it and almost for managers to see themselves as teachers or tutors.”

She added: “Key to that idea is that managers spend most of their time giving feedback, listening to employees in a way that would be similar to what you’re doing with your learners.”

Anthony Bravo, principal of Basingstoke College, said the key was to have high expectations of student, staff — and yourself.

“You have to know that your college is great — or, if it’s not great, that you want to make it great. If you don’t have that belief, the college is sunk,” he said.

“Our vision is simple: every learner will succeed.”

This might be ambitious, he admitted, but having visited colleges awarded grade one by Ofsted, this ethos had stayed with him.

“Every teacher must fight for every learner. I have ridiculously high expectations, I can’t help it.

“I dream of having 100 per cent success rates, and that’s what I largely get,” he said.

“If you have low expectations the vast majority will live down to those expectations. When you have really high expectations, the vast majority will live up to them.”

Like Professor Unwin, he argued that the best support a leader could provide might be to allow people to use their own judgment.

 

From left: Professor Lorna Unwin, Institute of Education and Anthony Bravo, principal of Basingstoke College

“You must trust people,” he said. “You must allow them to fail. Not twice on the same thing, but definitely once.

“What’s important is that your people know what support is available for them to meet those expectations.”

He gave delegates a taster of some of the strategies for improvement he and his curriculum manager had designed, and provided copies of a teaching and learning assessment strategy for them to take away.

“There is no best way of doing anything. Whatever you do has got to be a conscious decision on your part to try and be as good as you can be,” he said.

Caption for featured image:

Professor Unwin adresses delegates at the LSIS leadership and management conference in London                     Pictures by Nick Linford

The prospect of making the leap into leadership without any guidance can be daunting for senior staff.

“I’d been challenged by my then chief executive, who said “Do you want to be a principal or not?’” says Esme Winch.

“And having decided I did, I thought the LSIS senior leadership and management development course would be a good way to take that forward.”

So she enrolled last year – and has since been appointed principal of Loughborough College.

The LSIS course, a series of short residential modules over nine months with follow–up work, aims to prepare senior managers for the challenges of leadership as principals or chief executives.

As Ms Winch discovered, these challenges can be external to the organisation, and internal.

“There’s a whole host of stuff going on, the policy and funding environment, the local enterprise partnership (LEPs) . . .,” she says.

“All of that is good when you’re an established principal but as a new principal in a new college, you’ve got to get that on board with a new team around you and new set of governors.

“It was great being able to have a look on the course at issues around change management. In a new job you are going to want to change things, and we’re in a sector that constantly has to change and reinvent.

“You need the skills, expertise and confidence to be able to do that.”

An emphasis on theory into practice is central to the revamped course, which took over from Aspiring Principals in 2011.

Participants are encouraged to apply their new skills in the workplace as they learn, and are offered mentoring via email, telephone or in person.

This was one of the course’s strengths for Graham Towse, who is now about to take up his first principal’s post at Hull College.

“It was very much about not just being lectured to.

“Instead, it was about practical application of what you’d been learning,” he says.

“You studied your module, practised scenarios with your colleagues on the course, then went back to base, experimented with it and applied it, with the support of mentors.

It was great being able to have a look on the course at issues around change management

“I learnt a lot from the first couple of modules and was able to apply that learning very quickly in my normal working. As a result I saw some real changes and improvements in the way I led and managed, and engaged with people.

“You got out of the course what you wanted to put in.

“It’s the type of course where the emphasis is very much on you as a person to develop.”

Many participants find that a major part of this development comes through the opportunity to network.

Mr Towse says: “As a deputy principal you don’t always get the opportunity to get out and about and network with other colleagues at the same level. You tend to be back at base managing things.

“Following the course I’ve got a network of 20 or 30 people who regularly share things. We’ve been looking for opportunities for joint development as well — that’s been really useful.”

Ali Foss, vice principal at Queen Mary’s College Basingstoke, was part of the first cohort on the revamped course.

“Once you get a large group together who are working closely enough to be very open and honest with each other, then you begin to work out who’s got the greatest expertise in different areas,” she says.

“We were able to be stronger than the sum of our parts because there was probably nothing between us that one of us had not come across before.

“We’ve all stayed in touch, we’re all sharing strategies. That kind of professional relationship that continues beyond the end of the course is always valuable.”

Ms Foss acknowledges that it can be difficult in a rapidly changing sector to find the time to reflect alongside senior practitioners; training that allowed that to happen was important not just for individuals but for the sector as a whole.

Esme Winch adds: “It is undoubtedly important for more principals and aspiring principals to engage with training like this.

“The senior leadership course was very specific, which I thought was very good – and I’m not sure what else there is around for aspiring principals without getting into very general leadership training.”

LSIS is currently recruiting the fourth cohort, offering modules into 2014, but the loss of funding makes the course’s future look uncertain.

Graham Towse describes this as “a shame”.

“The sector needs a senior leadership programme to help to develop the leaders of the future — and this has been a very good course,” he says.

“I’m hoping there will be something within the new FE Guild that aspiring leaders will be able to access when they want to move on to the next level.”

Caption for featured image: From left: Esme Winch, principal of Loughborough College, Graham Towse, currently vice principal at the Grimsby Institute for FE & HE and will take up his new position as principal of Hull College in April and Ali Foss, vice principal at Queen Mary’s College Basingstoke

Sheila Selwood finds it easy to explain the inspiration for the Learning Board, LSIS’s support for governing bodies.  “We don’t always see ourselves as others see us,” says the director of governance at West Herts College.

The support programme developed when West Herts governors approached LSIS after realising that  they wanted more than the internal view provided by self–assessment and, as Ms Selwood says, there was “nothing out there”.

West Herts and the service partnered to develop the programme, which examines how FE governors work as a team, and provides feedback and suggestions to allow them to improve their effectiveness. It was trialled at the college before it was rolled out nationally.

The governors of St Helen’s College, Merseyside, used the Learning Board last year, after the clerk to the corporation, Chris Jones, picked up a leaflet at the LSIS annual governance conference.

Ms Jones says: “Another clerk at the conference had had it in her college and was recommending it at one of the workshops, so I brought it back to our board as an idea and our governors decided to go with it.

“Initially, the Learning Board facilitators came in and discussed it with the principal, the chair and myself, and gave us quite an extensive questionnaire.”

The facilitators then conducted interviews lasting an hour and a half with governors, face–to–face or over the phone.

“I thought ‘this isn’t going to go down very well with the governors,’ and I don’t think they thought it would take an hour and half. But once they started talking about the college it was hard to stop them,” says Ms Jones.

Interviews include questions on the core purpose and values of the college, the risks to it, the relationships between board members, the chair, senior management teams and stakeholders and how each governor saw themselves as fitting into to that picture.

The consultants also attend and observe a range of board meetings: to “get under the skin” of how the board operates, as Shelia Selwood explains.

The whole idea of other people coming in and observing the meetings works”

“The whole idea of other people coming in and observing the meetings works. They see how the board communicates, how the board and management interact and how they behave as a corporate team – an external person can often see things that you don’t see yourself because you’re enmeshed in the process,” she says.

Rather than compliance, the process focuses on five key areas: core business, trust and support, contribution and execution, stakeholder engagement and leadership. It is based largely on a model developed by Patrick Lencioni in his 2002 book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which puts effective teamwork at the centre of the success of any business or organisation.

Consultants take their findings and compile a report which is fed back to the college but, says Ms Jones, the feedback still takes into account the thoughts of the board.

“The report came back to the chair and was very much of the view that it was our report. We were told to amend anything if we wanted. So, for example, there were recommendations based on comments by just one governor, and the chair was keen for those to be separated out from things flagged up by a larger number of governors.”

Ms Selwood has continued to be involved with the programme, and has contributed as an external assessor at another college.

She says: “It has enabled people to look at their framework of governance; it has enabled them to look at the quality of information they receive, to look at the relationship between the board and the college managers.”

Although not a problem at her own college, the Learning Board has also helped colleges that have “thornier issues”, such as the dominance of a particular governor, the chair or the principal, or an imbalance in the relationship between manager and governors.

“If there are difficult issues, hearing them from somebody else can sometimes be easier than hearing from a colleague,” she says.

However, it is also able to flag up much simpler changes that could make a huge difference to the operation of even a fairly effective board.

Ms Selwood says: “The external assessors noticed the board didn’t have an opportunity to socialise and to talk to each other outside meetings, so we introduced a break half way through
a meeting. That was just one simple
thing we were able to change, which we hadn’t spotted at all.”

Governors at St Helen’s College had a similar experience when their feedback suggested they move their development session to a seperate evening, rather than the usual slot before the board meeting.

Ms Jones says: “It focuses the governors’ minds on ‘that’s training, this is board business’, which was an interesting observation. It’s not rocket science, is it? But it’s made a difference.”

The concept of the Learning Board is based on a theory of group problem–solving developed by theorist Peter Senge, which describes a learning organisation as one where members are continually reflecting and learning as they work, so the feedback is only the beginning.

Ms Jones says: “We dedicated a whole meeting to the LSIS report. We went through it systematically and picked out actions, and I’m now going to develop a quality improvement plan that we can follow up in the long term.”

For Ms Selwood, the facilitated self–assessment must be built on with continuing self–assessment.

“You’re in a changing sector so you should be robust about your own strategic leadership role — which many colleges are,” she says.

“If you don’t, you’ll never identify improvement and you can become incredibly complacent. What a rotten role model that would be to the rest of the college . . . when we are demanding self–assessment and improvement and high aspirations, that has to start with the board.

“There’s a whole impetus of self–assessment that we cannot afford to lose when LSIS goes, which I think boards are aware that they need to do.”

Having watched the Learning Board from its conception, Ms Selwood believes the project has been a success.

“I think it’s been very well received – we were certainly glad we did it, and I know others who’ve they’ve been glad they did it too,” she says.

“It’s not dictatorial, it’s an enabler. It enables you to look at things from a different perspective.”

Caption for featured image: Sheila Selwood, director of governance at West Herts College and Chris Jones, clerk to the corporation of St Helen’s College

Huge responsibilities, you don’t get paid and there’s little in the way of a public profile — why would anybody want to be a college governors’ chair?

The role of governance has been nudged into the spotlight by a joint report from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) and Ofsted, and by a new debate on whether governing bodies – and particularly their chairs – should be paid.

The joint report, How Colleges Improve, highlights the need for strong and effective leaders. The debate on payments for the legions of volunteers in schools and colleges was prompted by Ofsted’s chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw.

So what are the qualities that you need to become a chair?

For Mike Parker, who holds the post at the Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education, it’s something of a balancing act.

“You’ve got to be a good listener and sounding board, and you’ve got to be able to walk this line between the executive and governance  . . . and you’ve got to do that skilfully,” he says.

Janet Morgan, who has been chair of Derby College for three years, shares that view.

She says: “You need someone who is available to support the principal, and work well with them, but who realises their role is one of governance and not of operating the college.

“They should be able to draw the distinction between fulfilling their role as a governor rather than getting involved in the operational side of it and keeping an objective view of what management is doing.”

Meanwhile, for Angela Lloyd, chair of governors at Coleg Gwent since October 2011, previous experience of a management role is essential.

“In the same way you look for leadership qualities in a principal and chief executive, to be an effective chair you also need good leadership qualities,” she explains.

“You also need to come up with ideas to be innovative and creative in your contribution.”

But, according to Iain Mackinnon, who was chair of Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College for five years from 2005 and continues to govern there, the perfect chair doesn’t exist.

“I don’t think there is such a thing,” he says.

“Part of it is having some variety, people are different — there are people at the end of their careers who devote quite a bit of time, there are people who are currently working who can bring in knowledge and experience and expertise from their work, there are people who’ve got fingers in pies locally, which is invaluable, and there are people who can offer a bridge across from another sector they’ve worked in.”

The one thing that it seems all chairs must have is time, something that often surprises new incumbents.

“It’s probably been more involved than I expected,” says Janet Morgan.

“As a board member you perhaps don’t see how much extra the chair puts into the role, you feel that they come, they chair the committee meeting and that’s probably it . . .  but it’s quite a lot more.”

Angela Lloyd agrees. “Until you actually take on the role, you don’t realise the amount of work that is involved,” she says.

“On top of your main responsibilities there are things like additional meetings, chair’s meeting with the principal, the agenda planning, which you carry out, events which you might be invited to, as well as individual responsibilities that you have as chair.”

Iain Mackinnon thought long and hard before he took on the role at his West London college.

 

Angela Lloyd, chair of governors at Coleg Gwent and Iain Mackinnon, former chair of governors at Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College

“I wanted to do it properly, but I was anxious and I was aware that finding the time would be difficult, and so it has proved,” he says.

He decided to take up the position because he felt he could make a difference to the college, and although he was forced to step down to focus on his own business, he feels he succeeded.

“I enjoyed my work as a governor, I think the work that colleges do is important, I think I got to the stage where I’d got some things I wanted to say and things I wanted to see happen,” he explains.

But it was a much swifter process for  Mike Parker. He was fast–tracked into the role after a long–standing chair stepped down, and no one from the existing board stepped forward.

When the college principal approached him, Parker says it was his commitment to the Grimsby community that persuaded him to agree.

“I was born and bred in Grimsby,” he says. “I’d spent my whole business career working in Grimsby. I am committed to the area and recognised the importance of such a substantial institution to the local community. I wanted to be involved.

“Doing it the way I did really gives you a fresh eye.

“I’m not sure that’s a bad thing in the current climate actually, because you do have to be very innovative and ask questions that might have been asked before. I wasn’t too precious about getting lots of previews about the institution.”

You’ve got to be able to walk this line between the executive and governance”

Following his stint as chair, Mackinnon has some sympathy with Parker’s view, but says his advice would be to talk to the current chair.

“Get to understand how they play the role, you may well want to do it differently, but you’ll learn a lot talking to them,” says the London governor.

Chairs don’t need to have an education background, he thinks, but they do need to keep themselves informed about the wider sector.

“You can’t simply rely on you principal as a source of information, Chairs have to build their own source of information,” he says, advising chairs to read the sector press and use Twitter to follow influential figures in the sector.

“Also, you need to be sure you’ve got the confidence of senior managers, the principal and fellow governors.”

This is a key piece of advice from Morgan, too, who says: “Work closely with your principal, work closely with the clerk, find out what the life of the college is about really, get out and meet the students, get out and meet the staff, find out what they feel about it.”

For many chairs, this final piece of advice is also the most rewarding part of the role, which makes all the commitment worthwhile.

To this end, the best bits for Morgan have been, “meeting with the students, being able to support the students, their enthusiasm, and being a part of the achievements of the college”.

And Mackinnon also talks warmly about his college.

“You don’t want to get in the way of what the principal and their team are up to, but just popping your nose in and finding out what’s going on can be helpful, because as a governor you can understand where there are barriers which people have just accepted which you can find a way around,” he says.

And for Parker, who describes himself as “relative newcomer,” the entire process has been “extremely rewarding”. He adds: “I have absolutely no regrets getting involved in the sector at all.”

Caption for featured image: Mike Parker, chair of governors at the Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education and Janet Morgan, chair of governors at Derby College