All the talents

The board of any school should ensure that its governors can collectively provide the required skills and experience. Nick Sladden explains how to do this by interpreting the results of an inhouse skills audit

Using a skills audit to identify the existing attributes of governors is a good starting point to ensure the balance of talents a school’s board needs, as well as helping to identify any deficiencies. This skills audit process should use a questionnaire, with governors scoring their individual expertise against a predetermined list of skills. Usually, the scoring is on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is a “limited degree of expertise” and 5 is “expert”.

What does it mean?
Once all governors have completed their questionnaires, the results should be analysed. The simplest way of doing this is with a spreadsheet; enter the skills from the specimen questionnaire in the first column and map the scores for each governor in subsequent columns. The spreadsheet can then be used to determine the high scores for each area of expertise, allowing the school to identify where skills shortages may exist. It is essential that areas of expertise can be demonstrated by the board, even if a particular expertise rests with just one.

Comparing apples to pears
Understanding the areas of expertise that have not recorded high scores makes it possible to identify whether there are areas of weakness. However, another factor to consider is the scoring approaches undertaken by different people. One governor may score a 4, whereas a second governor with a similar level of expertise may only score a 3. Marginal differences such as this are unlikely to cause problems, but it becomes a bigger issue as the breadth of scoring increases.

It is vital that the individual responsible for the process reviews the responses to ensure that they are reasonable and don’t carry rogue results. For instance, it would be anticipated that most governors would score highly in a few areas, but record no score in others. In one skills audit, a governor scored every area of expertise on the questionnaire as 3. In another example, a governor recorded no scores in any individual area, but instead added his own category of “common-sense” and scored this as 5. Neither approach was helpful to the process!

It is critical to the success of the audit that all responses are balanced. If rogue responses are identified, it is worth discussing those scores with governors and revising their results. For governors intent on scoring every area highly, it is worth emphasising that the ideal governor would have every desirable skill and quality, yet in all likelihood we each have only a few.

When responses are reviewed, common-sense must prevail. It is impractical to provide too much detail in the questionnaire. For instance, “property” expertise could include an estate agent, quantity surveyor, architect, property manager, builder etc. Therefore, it will always be necessary to consider individual circumstances.

Looking to the future
Considering the possibility of governor retirements in the near future is imperative. Where they are pending, it is wise to re-compute the results of the audit and exclude the results of those governors. This will make it easier to identify whether short-term retirements from the board are likely to remove areas of expertise.

Once results have been analysed, they should be reported to the board. It is then faced with a number of options. An obvious action is to recruit prospective governors to remedy any weaknesses in expertise. Other actions include:
• arranging formal training for governors to cover identified weaknesses;
• buying in missing expertise;
• co-opting individuals with specific skills to subcommittees; and
• agreeing a date for a future review of governor skills if no weaknesses have been identified.

Nick Sladden is a partner in Baker Tilly and is head of their Charities and Education Group in the South.

Return to Governance