What barriers deter people from becoming a school governor?

Do you think there are barriers which deter people from becoming a school governor?

Lord Hill has called for governors with ideas on how we can remove any barriers which may prevent people from becoming school governors.

He has set up the email address school.governors@education.gsi.gov.uk to which people can email suggestions.

My own thoughts which I have emailed to Lord hill are:

1) Get employers firmly on board. Many public bodies already allow employees to serve civic duties up to 5 days without any financial penalty to the individual. i.e The employee does not take these days as holiday or unpaid leave. They continue to be paid for their time serving as a school governor.

It would be good to extend this to all public bodies and private companies above a certain size, say over 250 employees.

2) Reward employers whose employees gave their time as school governors, public recognition or possibly tax rebates for the amount of time employees spent on civil duty.

Hampshire County council already do a good job recognising employers. See link with story below.

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/communications/mediacentre/mediareleases.htm?newsid=434029

3)Encourage more young people to get involved with School Governing by giving away music concert tickets in a similar scheme to Orange Rockcorps

http://www.orangerockcorps.co.uk/

4) Encourage single parents to become School Governing by paying for Child care provision. Single parents could be encouraged to join governing bodies if baby sitting or child provision was paid for without financial penalty to the school. At the moment it is down to each school what they allow under their governor expenses policy.

5) Review the criteria for being a school governor. There are many limitations which might scare some members of the community away from becoming a School governor.


What do others think?