Today’s news review looks at coverage of the Secretary of State’s comments on parent governors and PSHE during her appearance at the Education Select Committee.
Parent governors
Yesterday, 14 September, the Education Secretary Justine Greening appeared before the Education Select Committee. During the session, she was asked about the requirement for two elected parent trustees at academy trusts, a proposal put forward in the Educational Excellence Everywhere White Paper published in March 2015.
The Secretary of State said that she was not minded to implement the proposal and this was reported in the The Times, The Guardian, BBC News, TES, The Mirror and I.
Education Secretary Justine Greening told the committee:
- Parent governors play a vital role, and getting parents more involved is one way in which we can ensure schools improve
- When schools turn around, it’s when parents become more engaged and more invested in the school’s success, helping build the school from the outside alongside the hard work teachers are doing on the inside
We are clear that governors are a hugely important part of our school system, helping to hold schools to account on behalf of their communities.
It is vital that boards are connected with the parents and communities they serve. We don’t want to see boards become detached, distant or unanswerable to parents.
We’ve heard how strongly others feel about this too. That is why we will continue to require academy trusts to reserve places for parents in their governance structures.
PSHE
The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and The Sun all reported on the Secretary of State’s comments to the committee about whether personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education should be made compulsory in schools.
The Secretary of State told the committee that she was looking at the issue but hadn’t reached a formal view. She recognised that it was important that PSHE is delivered in a high quality way and ensured children can learn what they need.
A Department for Education spokesperson said:
We know that the majority of schools and teachers recognise the importance of PSHE. We trust teachers to tailor their lessons to best teach their pupils about staying safe emotionally and physically, and we are looking at all options to raise the quality of personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) teaching.
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