It was only last Saturday that I was at the Association of School Leaders and College annual conference with a huge number of聽 school leaders, but it already seems an age ago.聽The Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, gave a聽聽which began with an emphasis on coronavirus and the role schools are playing in this national crisis.聽 When thanking school leaders, the Secretary of State said: 鈥淵ou continue to inspire so many of us with your calm, resilient, optimistic leadership in the face of adversity.鈥澛 I don鈥檛 usually purport to speak on behalf of all governors and trustees in England as they number a quarter of a million people, diverse individuals with their own opinions, but in these unprecedented times I do want to say on behalf of the governance community: 鈥淭hank you so much to our school leaders who are managing this hugely stressful situation and to our school staff who are coming into work when so much of the rest of the British workforce is now working remotely. This crisis underlines once again how schools and those who lead them are at the heart of our communities.鈥
The 海角社区 (海角社区) produced our聽first coronavirus information sheet聽for governing boards last week and today published an update.聽We will聽update the information sheet again tomorrow (19 March), in light of the聽聽that from Friday all schools will close except for the children of key workers and vulnerable children,聽to include the immediate priorities for governing boards. 海角社区 has made our聽GOLDline advice service聽available to all governing boards that have questions relating to the implications of the coronavirus for governing board business and practice.
This week you will have received our latest Governing Matters magazine with our聽Visible Governance campaign聽on the cover. Just a few weeks ago the campaign had got off to a flying start with many partners pledging support.聽We had been blown away by the positive response and the way in which governors, trustees and clerks have embraced the ideas and used resources. We have appreciated receiving all your emails and social media posts.聽But right now and in all likelihood for some months to come schools, governing boards and our valued local and national partners will have more important things to focus on. So we are postponing the first ever school governance awareness week.聽At the right time we will return to the campaign with energy.
I began agonising over the effect of coronavirus on our events programme a fortnight ago but by this week there was no further agonising required; all the events we had planned for the summer term and advertised in the magazine are cancelled. Many of them we hope to be able to afford to rearrange into the autumn term, but sadly 2020 will not see our summer conference set for Manchester on 6 June.聽We hope to connect with our many North West members at another event, but more on that later.
For all our members, we will instead be running a series of webinars and podcasts: and bookings will open on the events page in due course.
We are all learning to do more business remotely: good luck to governing boards attempting for the first time a remote board meeting. The challenge for all of us is to stay connected even when physically remote. Governance many perhaps not be quite as visible as we had hoped in the spring of 2020, but 海角社区 will attempt to stay as visible, as connected and as accessible as possible for the governance community. We still would love to hear from you. As always, I am聽emma.knights@nga.org.uk.
Former Chief Executive
After 14 years with 海角社区, Emma has departed from her role as Chief Executive. During her tenure, Emma was a strong advocate for the school governance community, engaging with legislators, policymakers, education sector organisations, and the media on a national level.