Recruit missing talent: resources for tackling diversity on your board

Why diversity matters

"I decided to become a governor because I left school at 15, and my school had no aspirations for me. I’ve just retired as a senior pathology research fellow. The current pupils at the school I govern will have a better deal than I did"
Chair of governors in a maintained school

The lack of diversity in governance isn't a new problem. Yet despite all the time, research and initiatives dedicated to this issue, many boards still struggle to reflect the true diversity in their communities and the wider population.

To start tackling the problem, it's important to know the basics.

What is diversity?

When we talk about diversity, we're talking about all the 'protected characteristics':

• Sex 
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Sexual orientation
• Gender reassignment
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Age
• Disability
• Marriage/civil partnership

When it comes to governance, we should also consider diversity in:

• Socioeconomic status
• Educational background
• Neurodiversity

This is because those who faced obstacles in education are often best-placed to understand how those barriers affect children, and what support they need to overcome them. 

Why does it matter?

There have been multiple reports over the years that highlight not just the lack of diversity on governing boards, but the benefits of increasing diversity. The DfE's governance guides for maintained schools (section 4.1.1) and academy trusts (section 2.4) point out that governing/trust boards that reflect the diversity of the community they serve:

• Promote an inclusive school environment
• Provide diverse role models for staff and young people
• Provide a variety of skills, experiences, qualifications, characteristics, perspectives and backgrounds
• Promote open debate informed by a range of voices and views
• Prevent the board from being dominated by 1 perspective
• Promote effective decision making

Additionally, the DfE encourages schools/trusts to collect and publish their board diversity data (see guidance for maintained schools and academies under 'governance information'. The guidance also sets out how board/committee members can opt out of sharing information about protected characteristics, including after the data is published).

Finally, the 2022 policy paper, Inclusive Britain, explains (section 5.5): 

Diverse boards, giving a voice to the wider school community, help ensure that decisions taken are in the interest of all pupils

You can add your information to GovernorHub

Governors are able to enter diversity data on GovernorHub in their personal profile. We've chosen the data categories based on the census.

Boards can download anonymised reports on the diversity data provided. This report can be published on the school/trust's website to meet the suggestion from the DfE. You can read more about how we have taken steps to maximise anonymity in our FAQs.

Why is diversity still a problem?

There's no single cause for the lack of diversity in governance.

In fact, our our research (carried out in 2022) identified several barriers to diversity.

There are 3 key barriers to entry into governance:

1. Most people don’t understand the role of school governance
2. Those people who do understand school governance are more likely to be older, white, middle class, more educated and higher earning
3. Most of the governors we surveyed arrived in their role through a 'closed-shop' route – e.g. through having worked in the sector/other links to the sector (such as personal relationships), or as parents of school-age children

Of the governors we surveyed – themselves typically older (35+), white and more educated – the majority said:

1. The public doesn’t understand their role, and believe it to be largely hidden
2. They've typically only seen stories about governance in the press a couple of times
3. They feel that the difference they make isn’t noticed or valued by the public

You can read the full findings, along with our recommendations, in our report, 'The missing pool of talent on school governing boards'.

Further resources

Multiple organisations have carried out research on the diversity problem on governing boards and offered solutions.

See below, if you'd like to find out more:

Work with a diversity partner

The answer to the diversity problem isn't in diversity recruitment alone. It's also in individual and systemic change.

In order for diversity to flourish, you should:

• Challenge yourselves to identify and remove barriers to diversity
• Recruit outside of your usual networks (and comfort zones)

To bring about this change, you may find it helpful to partner with people who specialise in helping boards like yours with these challenges.

Find a partner to remove barriers

Work with school improvement partners and organisations that specialise in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

We all need help with:

• Identifying and challenging our own unconscious biases – it's human to generalise and categorise, but this can lead to assumptions over time. We have to examine ourselves for these unconscious biases and constantly challenge how they come out in our thoughts and actions
• Identifying and challenging our institutional biases – like individuals, institutions can develop biases over time. For example, a preference for candidates from Russell Group universities might be considered a highly selective recruitment process on the surface, but the effect of this is that it might eliminate candidates who faced systemic prejudices in education

Until these unconscious issues are addressed, there'll always be barriers for individuals with protected characteristics. They're 'protected' characteristics specifically because these individuals are most likely to suffer the consequences of bias.

People with protected characteristics are also unlikely to want to work somewhere that harbours biases against them, however unconscious these biases are. 

The following is a short list of EDI partners that specialise in educational and governance settings.

Please note that their inclusion here is not intended as a recommendation from GovernorHub/The Key.

When you're ready to recruit, do so consciously

Once you've confronted any individual and institutional biases that have prevented diversity up to now, you're ready to create an inclusive board.

Discover what diversity looks like in your community

Remember that reflecting your local community is the first step, and a vital one. 

You can use our community insights tool to audit the diversity of your school community and then compare it to the make-up of your board.

When you have a good idea of what diversity might look like on your board, you'll be ready to reach out to a agency to help you achieve that.

Work with agencies that specialise in helping boards diversify

Using an agency can help you to diversify, as we know from our research that most governors come into their roles through their networks. If you're struggling to achieve a diverse board, then it's likely that your network for recruitment doesn't reach far enough.

Look for an agency/organisation that will work with you to improve diversity on your board through services like:

• Diversity training
• Leadership coaching
• Candidate management 
• Ongoing support

The organisations below understand governance, and that boards struggling with diversity need a multifaceted approach. Alongside a diverse pool of candidates, boards also need:

• Specific skills to fill gaps
• Values that align with those of their schools

Academies: support effective succession planning 

One of the features of a high-quality trust is supporting effective succession planning, as set out in the DfE's trust quality descriptions (page 10). This can be achieved by building a pipeline of future trustees and committee members, with a focus on promoting diversity of thought and experience.

As per the sections above, this means making sure your board represents the communities that it serves by thinking about all forms of diversity – the protected characteristics as well as areas like socioeconomic status, educational background and neurodiversity.

Try to:

• Develop your local governing bodies (LGBs) and invest in their training and effectiveness, so you can use them as a pool of future trustees
• Make the trust board itself more visible in school communities, so that people who consider joining your LGBs also see the trust board as an option