Governing

Today an old colleague told me she had resigned from her governing body as she could not go down the academy route for many and various principled reasons. In truth I expect I echo most of those, but the school whose governing body I chair choose to become one at the start of Feb. We did discuss pros and cons quite vocally, but in the end the vote was to move to becoming one. Many of the governors were swayed by the 'extra money next year' argument,  which takes me back to the eighties and very similar arguments about grant maintained status. The Department says, I think, that one in ten are now academies. Is it an unstoppable force, or will it, like GMS, reach a water mark and stop? I do like the use of stats here btw. You don't see the Dept shouting if 1 in 10 schools is delivering reading badly or whatever, because in that case 9 doing it well doesn't make their policy case. Back to governing and I will hopefully be attending the NGA conference on Wednesday where I shall be interested to hear a cross section of views about governance in the new policy framework. How will governors in academies differ to other schools? Will their role vis a vis the new trust bodies be different to Labour Academies? I think I will stay a governor, but put forward at all times my view re learning etc that it is much less about continual change of structure and more about relationships between students and staff, parents and teachers and of course governors and all of those.