Can governance be ethical if it is not diverse?

Introduction

There is growing understanding that governing boards in English schools and academies should be diverse (Department for Education (DfE) 2020). Yet progress towards this strategic aim remains slow despite initiatives to address this. We argue that governance cannot be ethical if it is not diverse. We ask whether boards represent their communities and whether they model diverse and ethical leadership as seen in the culture and values of a school or trust and through recruitment and we argue that governance cannot be ethical if it is not diverse. Our thinking about the question at the heart of this paper is influenced by ethical leadership as well as the Black Lives Matter movement (The New York Times, 2020). With full ethical permission, we draw on two diverse boards, one a maintained governing board for a primary school and the other a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) board, to support our opinion and thank them for sharing their challenges and successes. ¹

Representation

Governing boards of English state schools have faced calls to be more representative for over a quarter of a century. Gann (1998) highlighted that headteachers worried whether parent governors were representative of the school community. The Runnymede Trust (Rollock, 2009: 5) highlighted that those from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME), young people and lone parents were under-represented and only ‘7% of governors’ were thought to come from BAME backgrounds.’ The composition of governing boards in schools and Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) has not kept pace with such calls to diversify. Fast forward to 2018 and, according to the National Governance Association's (NGA) annual survey, only 4% of governors and trustees came from a BAME background, whilst 10% were aged under 40 and 1% were aged under 30.

Although the Runnymede Trust 2009 figures were estimated, clearly progress in diversifying school governance is too slow. Equally, trust leaders lack diversity: ‘[o]nly three per cent of the largest academy trusts in the country are led by non- white bosses’ (Staufenberg, 2018, paragraph 1). Knights highlighted that ‘Women are not equally represented as chairs of MAT boards; There are also very few BAME chairs of MATs.’ (Knights, 2019, paragraph 5).

The calls for diverse governing boards are also growing as the student body becomes more diverse. The NGA and Inspiring Governance (2018) initiated Everyone on Board to address this issue citing that around a third of pupils are from a BAME background. In addition, the 2015 reconstitution of governing boards with its emphasis on skill sets, together with the increase in academies (with reduced delegation to a local level), brought board composition into sharper focus.

A changing landscape?

Against such a backdrop, diverse boards working towards representing their communities do exist. Yinka Ewuola is Chair of Governors of the maintained governing body for Cobourg Primary School in Southwark, London. Yinka experienced racism when she attended the school as a child, which is why she was ‘honoured to go back .. and to be able to have the chance to do some good in this space in a school that is such an important part of my story.’ (Yinka Ewuola, 2020, personal communication, [14 November]). To Yinka, diversity is the fundamental asset that enables the governing body to be most effective, ‘because it increases the chance for being fit for purpose in the world we live in by ensuring that the views, considerations and impacts of that world are taken into account.’ Becky Perkes is Head of Governance for Core Education Trust in Birmingham. To Becky, diversity means ensuring ‘we have a governing board that represents the ethnic diversity of the city in which our schools and trust are located, and that there is diversity in terms of gender and ages.’ (Becky Perkes, 2020, personal communication, [24 November]). The composition of their governing boards is worth exploring with details presented as shared with us (Table 1).

Both boards are situated in large, diverse cities and we acknowledge there is a different challenge in more rural areas or where the population is less diverse. Nevertheless, we hope all boards can take useful knowledge or strategies from the examples shared.

Clearly the two boards cited have a diverse composition and both Yinka and Becky emphasise that this balance has been the result of deliberate actions. They wanted the board to represent their community and knowing the breakdown of gender, ethnicity, and age of the governors was important to them. Regarding a focus on skills, they are both clear that representation must be wider than skill sets, for example: ‘we seek out candidates to help fill skills and perspective gaps on our board’ (Yinka Ewuola) and ‘we had a particular focus on recruiting young governors and those from ethnic minority backgrounds,…[and] have capitalised on our existing links with industry experts to recruit younger governors’ (Becky Perkes).

Modelling

Parallel to the lack of representation and diversity is the question of how governing boards model and demonstrate the culture and values of the school or trust.

Three ethical structures support strategic governance. The Nolan Principles (Committee on Standards in Public Life, 1995) expect public officeholders to make decisions ‘impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.’ The board should also be cognisant of their public duty as defined by the The Equality Act (2010, 5) which is to make strategic decisions ‘designed to reduce the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage’. The advice to schools regarding their public sector equality duty is that they should ‘Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it,’ (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2014: 6) as well as demonstrate how they comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty and ‘publish equality objectives’ (2014, 32) in an accessible way. Sadly, there is no advice to help the governing board develop a diverse team.

The Framework for Ethical Leadership was commissioned by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL, 2017) and partners. It stands alongside the Equality Act and The Nolan Principles in supporting governors and trustees to make strategic decisions. The Framework was developed because of the concerns of ASCL members regarding the 'lack of guiding principles for ethical leadership in education.' The actions of some schools and trusts appeared to lack ethical principles regarding:

off rolling students,

Both Becky and Yinka use The Nolan Principles and the DfE Governance Handbook, are aware of The Framework for Ethical Leadership, and have an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy or something similar. One of the boards has published its Equality Objectives and the other has not. Regular consideration of these ethical structures enables boards to take the organisational temperature about the diverse culture and values that governors and trustees’ model and uphold.

Reflection points

Recruitment

One example which exemplifies the culture a board models is the recruitment of support staff, teachers, and leaders. When the strategic leaders of the school or trust uphold and model diversity, it is more likely that ethical behaviours and diverse representation are embedded across the organisation. Unfortunately, the lack of diversity on governing boards, is also reflected within the teaching profession. ‘Just 38 per cent of women are headteachers at secondary schools’ although women comprise nearly a third of all secondary teachers (Staufenberg, 2018). The Gender Pay Gap in education in 2018 was 18.4%, higher than the national average of 13.1% (Ward, 2018) which affects all women who work in English schools. In 2019, ‘14% of teachers are now from an ethnic minority background compared with 9% of senior leaders.’ with the latter experiencing ‘subtle, negative, and exclusionary actions’ (Choudry, 2019, 60). There is little data on teachers or leaders with a disability with English schools last asked in 2017: ‘Only 50% of schools returned the information, which showed only 0.5% identifying as disabled [which] contrasts with 22% of the working population’ (Golding, 2020, 37). ‘7% of governors and trustees in the annual governance survey 2021 consider themselves to have a disability’ with ‘2% identifying as bisexual, 1% as a gay man and 1% as lesbian or as a gay woman and a handful preferring to ‘self describe’ as pansexual or asexual. (Ebbs and Tate, 2021, 11).

Data on educators who identify as LGBT is non-existent so we must extrapolate from the 2.2% of the UK population aged 16 years and over identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGBT) (Office for National Statistics, 2018).

In too many instances we are therefore left with school staff and governing boards that replicate the 'stale, pale and male' boards of yesterday (Millar, 2017). Yet there is a wealth of evidence from business organisations that diversity is an advantage.

PriceWaterHouseCooper highlights that, given women are underrepresented at every level of corporate leadership, ‘CEOs have finally woken up to the fact that they’ve failed for far too long to leverage this immense talent pool’ (2017, 5). McKinsey's data from 366 public companies showed that ‘Companies in the top quartile of racial/ethnic diversity were 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their national industry median’ (Hunt et al., 2015, 1). The most important performance drivers identified by the researchers were:

advantages in recruiting the best talent;

NGA's useful guide to recruiting governors and trustees emphasises recruiting a range of ‘experiences, characters, backgrounds, perspectives, attributes and abilities’ to ensure the right people round the table (2018, 1). So it is heartening that the NGA's survey in 2020 shows a slight improvement in recruitment for diversity: a fall of 1% in the number of white chairs and an 1% increase in Asian/British Asian chairs alongside a fall of 0.2% in those identifying as Black, African, Caribbean/Black British. Black, Asian and minority ethnic governors and trustees were also more likely to be aged under 40, or parent governors. (NGA, 2020a). The survey found that male governors were less likely in primary and nursery phase whilst the gender balance of chairs of MATs/Single Academy Trusts (SAT) was 50/50. However, ‘female non-chairs were less likely to say they were planning or were considering becoming chair of their board’ (NGA, 2020a). 20% of the governors who were under 30 identified as LGBTQ + ; overall 3% of respondents identify as LGBTQ +  (Table 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Composition of governing board.

	Cobourgh Primary School	Core Education Trust
Number of governors	12	39
Female	8	21
Male	4	18
Age	Full range Oldest: 60 +  Youngest: early 30s	Full range Oldest: 70 +  Youngest: 20s 12 under 40
Ethnicity	4 Black 1 Asian 7 White European   (inc EAL European)	10 Black 19 White
Religion	Christianity Islam Secular	No data

The current picture is thus one of tentative steps forward whilst NGA reflects the concerns we highlight in this paper: ‘there is a lack of diversity among those involved in governance … which means that boards are not necessarily representative of the communities they serve’ (Garrington, 2020, paragraph 5). In terms of innovation and better decision making, it is more than time for boards to be deliberate in embracing diversity and ethical leadership.

What is needed to take the next step?

To help us all answer the question framing this paper, a more deliberate, constructive disruption is required. What are the practical and ethical ways forward, so that we are not writing a similar paper in 10 years’ time?

We need to start by auditing governance, teaching, leadership and support teams and compare those to the population profiles of our communities (nomis, n.d.). Such profiles do not include invisible characteristics such as sexual orientation or disability yet give governors a clearer picture of their community to help identify further development goals. At Cobourg Primary School ‘governors are free to co-opt whomever they choose, and .. we do individual and team reviews of our practice as well in order to get a sense of our requirements.’ As a result, Yinka Ewuola gives ‘definitive briefs regarding required skills and experience’ when working with Inspiring Governance to support recruitment.

NGA's network of Pathfinder Schools are applying The Framework for Ethical Leadership (National Governance Association, 2020b) and a resource bank from the work of the Pathfinder Schools will become available. The National Black Governors Network identifies, and where possible matches, individuals, with the skill set required to add value to governing boards as well as offering learning and development opportunities (https://www.nbgn.co.uk/).

Another resource to support trustees is a collection of essays, On Diversity. Jennese Alozi tells us that ‘sustainable growth and high standards become unreachable’ without diversity’ (2020, 9).

Covid-19 has also brought positive developments for governance. Governors and trustees embraced Zoom, Teams and Google Meet demonstrating that geography is not a barrier to effective governance. Remote governance has helped Becky Perkes to retain high quality governors ‘from typically underrepresented communities’ citing a colleague who moved to Dubai and continues as a local governor. This benefits boards in more rural and less diverse populations, is more inclusive for working governors and parents, and can address the perspective gap we have cited. A second benefit of Covid-19 is the increase in opportunities for professional learning on the benefits of diversifying governance teams.

This wealth of resources to support a governing board to diversify is welcome: a point for reflection is how your board will draw on the resources and readings highlighted.

Concluding thoughts

To us, ethical and diverse leadership goes beyond compliance and accountability and is about shaping and modelling a values-driven culture. It is leadership which sees diversity as a strategic advantage to the board and its school community. Understanding what this looks like in practice means listening to, engaging with, and learning from your school community. Diversity goes beyond the protected characteristics, and we argue that ethical boards must consider diversity of thought and perspective. This is as much about how boards function as what they look like. Beckey Perkes explains that their governing boards ‘are not simply echo chambers for one particular mindset or viewpoint.’ We agree with Yinka Ewuola that ‘It's about who we want to be and ensuring that we allow others the chance to be their best selves by having an environment where their needs and requirements were considered.’

We posited that, to be ethical in governance, we must value diversity in its fullest sense. We add one further call to this:

‘I am really concerned about … so little action being taken around creating fairness and equity in governance and then through the school. Children's lives are literally being derailed on our watch and we don't seem to be close enough to their experiences (as a national group of governors) to do anything about it’ (Yinka Ewuola).