Questions every school councillor needs to ask

All council members need to know what the rules are (or at least where they're to be found).

• Constitution.
• Code of conduct.
• Standing orders.
• Mission statement (or statement of purpose).
• Strategic plan.
• Business plan.
• The regulator's most recent report.

You also have to pay attention to:

• Australian Education Act 2013.
• The state education act you're under.
• Your school's policies.

As well as the general rules, you should get an idea of your school's particular circumstances. Look at:

• Last couple of annual reports (including financial statements).
• Last year's council minutes.
• Phone and email contact list of the council members (and the principal).

And you may need a mentor.

ICDA offers training options to learn more.

Governing. You, as a member of council, are there to contribute to the school's governance.

A school council's job is to help make the school better. What constitute's "better" is harder to define for schools than it is for businesses, because you can't simply appeal to the bottom line - but whatever excellence is in this context, it's the council's job to help maximise it. That's school goverance.

Achieving good governance:

• Focus on improving learning outcomes for students.
• Review progress on student learning outcomes.
• Engage with the school community on student learning.
• Lead conversations about key issues and challenges.
• Evaluate and communicate with the school community about activities.
• Promote meaningful family and community partnerships.
• Monitor and review compliance and risk.

Making up your own mind

Whatever the constitution of the council, whatever its power, whatever its customs, whoever elected or appointed you, there's on absolute law: nobody can tell you which way to vote. Your responsibility is to make every decision based on what you, as an individual, think is right for the school. Not the principal, not the group you're elected from, not the minister, not the government, you. You're not a rubber stamp. If anyone suggests you should be, point out their mistake. Other people may be able to overrule you, but that's an entirely different matter.

Independence: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

There is an enormous number of governance models (and an even more enormous number of different ways of providing a child with an education).

Four types of governing body:

1. A deliberative forum
2. A consultative sounding board
3. An executive board
4. A governing body

Every type of council member has their own strengths, and you want your council to be able to draw on many of those strengths.

• Parents
• Teachers and support staff
• Students
• Specialist appointees
• Community members

Having specific positions on the council for various interest groups brings different perspectives together.

How diverse is your council?

The composition of school councils should adequately represent the multiple and diverse views in the school community so that sound decisions are made.

The principal

The principal's shere of authority covers different groun in every state and in each sector - perhaps in every school.

You shouldn't micromanage, but you do need to know that someone's managing the micro.

The office bearers

• President
• Treasurer
• Secretary

The members

If you want to push any initiative or make any changes, they're the people you'll have to convince.

The subcommittees

Subcommittee should be independent from the council (or there's no point having them) but not detached; it helps it they have some idea of how things will play out.

The council

The council is not just six or ten or 15 people sitting around a table. It's more than the sum of its parts. All together you have powers - and responsibilities - that none of you have separately.

Leading and planning

• Start with the vision - how the school should look in a few years from now. Run this past your stakeholders for their comments.
• Break it down into a shortlist of particular fields, and for each of them say what you have to change to get there from here.
• How are you going to make these changes? What are the stages you'll have to pass through along the way?
• How will you know when you've got there? What are the criteria for success? How are you going to monitor progress?

Monitoring and compliance

Academic monitoring:

• parent satisfaction summary
• school staff survey
• teacher asssessments
• average number of student absence days
• students' attitude to school - connectedness to school
• students' attitudes to school - student perceptions of safety

Compliance:

Every school has to observe the provisions of an enormous number of laws. Just reading them out, in fact, would take up quite a lot of the average council meeting. They include, just for starters, OHS law, employment law, environmental law, child protection law, charities law, trade practices law, tax law, discrimination law, contract law, fundraising law, and privacy law.

You have to take someone else's word that the school is fully in compliance. It's not enough, though, to ask, "Everything's fine? Good" once a year. You need to be satified that the school has a system in place to make sure that someone checks these things, on a regular schedule, and reports back.

Every organisation needs to have some things written down so that you don't have to start from scratch every time something comes up. You need a policy manual.

More and more, a school's policies are strongly affected by external requirements and not simply developed internally.

You do generally get some flexibility, though, and in that lies your opportunity to go that extra step and do it better. Where something is compulsory, the principal will tell you; when it's optional, the council can choose to take the lead in developing or modifying a policy.

Check out the Policy Bank

Murphy's law says that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Risk management is about keeping Murphy in check.

• Identifying risks during a planning process
• Progress reports in relation to the strategic plans and goals
• Financial risks
• Monitoring and reviewing
• Handling conflict of interest risks

Insurance

Check with the principal that the school is adequately covered for unforseeable events that can find their way around your risk management precautions.

Educational risks

Here, risk is not necessarily bad, and effective risk governance doesn't simply mean being risk-adverse in all circumstances. Innovation in education and learning is risk.

Development of a school in a new direction is risk. New strategic goals may pose a risk. The governance of risk is fundamental to making good decisions.

The principal

The principal provides council with the figures they have to work with, and will ensure that the columns add up and the books balance.

The treasurer

The council should elect a treasurer (who isn't the principal or the finance manager) to gather information on money matters. This doesn't mean that other non-treasurer members can sit back and not contribute - everyone on council, no exceptions, is supposed to be financially literate, able to read financial statements and ask pertinent questions - but the treasurer should talk things over the finance manager to go behind the numbers and see where the problems might lie.

Please see Damn Good Advice for Treasurers.

The finance commitee

It's a good idea to have a properly delegated finance committee (that includes the finance manager) so that you're not putting too much on the treasurer's shoulders.

The budget

Budgeting is simply the process of planning your school's finances for 12 months.

Ideally, the budget is aligned to the goals and priorities in the three-year strategic plan, and is checked against it at every point.

The systems

While the council shouldn't micromanage, it has to protect the school's funds. The involves checking that the school has an effective system of internal controls in place.

Teaching and curriculum

The actual work of the classroom falls under the authority of teachers and principal, and the council can't intervene. It's outside their competence. It's also, in one sense, their responsibility. The council should set the school's developmental priorities, and it'll need to be supplied on a regular basis with the relevant data on how the school's resources are being deployed.

Effective councils accompany and support their principals in the work of improving pupil and staff performance through asking the right questions.

Once you've discussed students, staff and parents, what's next is stakeholders - the larger community, or all those outside groups that can affect the operations of the school or are affected by the operations of the school.

Consider the subcommittee

Subcommittees must have at least three members including at least one school council member. This can be an excellent introduction to the work of the school council.

Building partnerships

The council should also enquire about building partnerships, networks, and learning communities that support students' personalised learning.

Once of the reasons why we have councils is to introduce elements of the community into the work of the school. The school community isn't necessarily identical to the Australian community as a whole - every school has its own characteristics, its own vision, and its own audience. It's not a good idea, though, to set your sights too narrowly. If your school's students, council or staff are entirely unrepresentative of the general public that needs to be enlisted to support the school, you may have a problem - one that could steadily get worse.

Being a council member doesn't simply mean abiding by state and Commonwealth laws. People - and organisations - are also measured by their ethical standards. Some actions may fall within the law, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be accepted as "good" decisions by an organisation or by society in general. Ethics are inextricably tied up with public relations.

A councillor's work is about people - working with them and learning from them. As a start, get to know your fellow members and what they have to offer. The point of having a council is to tap into and make use of a wide range of ideas, perceptions and perspectives.

• The principal
• The teachers
• The parents
• The students

Most councils, most of the time, get along well enough. You're working for a common cause - you're all committed to the school's educational goals, and there's a starting assumption of universal goodwill. Get to know the other members - it helps if the council can organise some informal social contact between meetings. Disagreements occur, however, in even the most close-knit of groups.

Managing conflict

Differences of opinion may become conflicts when the side that doesn't win the vote won't accept the outcome. Ideally, every organisation combines a wide range of opinions with a willingness to accept the majority view and move on.

Identifying existing and potential conflict

Serious conflicts arise when people will not accept the outcomes of the normal processes of governance. A strong and well-managed council will have less trouble gathering clear support for its decisions and will have few problems with continuing disagreements.

Managing disputes

• Identify the implications of the conflict occurring
• Indentify responsibilities within the conflict

Your school may have a fundraising committee to identify possible sources of income (can you rent out your carpark to a farmers market on Sundays?) and seek donations from the community. The fundraising commitee certainly should ask every member of council for the sames of any of their acquaintances who may be supportive of a properly targeted appeal. However, the council's role isn't fundraising as such.

Part of a council member's job is being an ambassador to the community, and part of any ambassador's job is to bring in the business. That's your role as an individual member though, whereas council as a whole has a broader overview.

A council has the wider role of overseeing general revenue - all the money the school brings in from government grants, fees, donations and miscellaneous sources. The principal supplies the council with a full breakdown of what's coming in from each stream, flagging any potential difficulties or weak spots.

The council's primary financial responsibility, thogh, is to see that the money coming in balances the money going out. When it comes to nightmare scenarios, the term "trading while insolvent" is right up there with "zombie apocalypse". It's also just about as unlikely, so we won't spend much time on it, but it's unlikely partly because councils generally do their job properly.

As a council member you need to be able to work with the school's financial reports. You have to be able to follow what the finance manager is talking about and analyse the implications of changes in the numbers. Those numbers paint a picture of your situation that's as significant as your other performance measures, and one that's less likely to be distorted by hope or pride or vanity.

You need to understand:

• Balance sheet
• Profit and loss

Please see Damn Good Advice for Board Members.

To understand what the numbers in front of you mean, you can't just look at them one by one in isolation. You need also to consider the ratios:

• Income/expenditure
• Assets/liabilities
• Debt/equity
• Net surplus/total income
• Beneficiaries surplus/income
• Income/unit of output
• Overhead/unit of output
• Annual income/total assets
• Teacher costs/admin costs
• Teacher costs per teacher

That's not the right question. The question is "How do we get things done?"

You also have to develop the skills to get things done. There must be a road from the ideal to the practice. In practice, you need to be able to work with people.

Negotation

• Know what you want; find out what they want.
• Look for win-win.
• Be agreeable, but not accommodating.
• Go for the outcome, no for the win.
• Don't get personal.
• Be prepared to settle.
• Remain ethical.

Effective meetings

• Know the procedures.
• Know your place.
• Watch the clock.
• Mind your manners.
• Do your homework.
• Be flexible.
• Ask and keep on asking.
• Talk as well as listen.
• Timing is everything.
• Put your hand up.
• Check and correct the record.

The role of the president

A good leader, and a good president, will find out where everybody wants to go and strike a balance between that and where they need to go. The closer they get to the latter, the better they are. That's leadership.

There are enormous amounts of material on the financial responsibilities of individual council members. As a general rule, you're unlikely to run into trouble if you're acting with the honesty and application that you'd expect from anybody else in that position, so we'll just give you a quick look at the high points.

Fiduciary duties

• Our duty of loyalty to the school community.
• Our duty of care to the school community.
• Thinking and planning ahead.
• Our professional values and behaviour.

Conflicts of interest

Private interests may be direct or indirect, as well as financial or non-financial:

• Direct interests like family or professional interests.
• Indirect interests like groups the councillor is, or was recently, closed associated.
• Financial interests like having a position in a company bidding for work at the school.
• Non-financial interests like any tendency toward favouritism or prejudice resulting from a friendship

Keeping yourself safe

As a council member, your first duty is to serve the school's interests, not your own or anyone else's.

Please see a sample of Conflicts of Interest Policy

What is misconduct?

A failure to behave in the ways described in the code may be considered misconduct and in the most serious cases, depending on the school's rules and other guidelines, may lead to suspension or removal from office or the school council.

Any frustrations of being a council member are generally hugely outweighed by the satisfaction gained - otherwise one shouldn't do it. Most agree that while outsiders may see their contribution as selfless, the benefits derived from the experience usually outweigh the sacrifices.

• Making a difference.
• Gaining new knowledge.
• Gaining new skills.
• Expanding your networks.
• Putting yourself in conext.
• Being inspired.
• Being included.

The first part of this guide covered what you should expect to be filled in on when joining the council. If your school didn’t give you an adequate introduction to your duties, one of your duties is to make sure that they correct that before the next candidate comes along. Council members don’t necessarily have long terms in office, and it’s important to get them up to speed as soon as possible.

Whether or not you had any formal training when you joined the council, part of your review process should involve asking whether the council (as a whole, or individually) needs further training to fulfil its duties. If your members have come on at different times from different streams under different procedures there could be value in getting you all up to speed on a common training program.

Every school council should review its own performance against the mission at regular intervals (e.g. every couple of years). Try to structure your review to come up with an agreed diagnosis. Every part of this guide is a chance to identify what you should and could be doing.

As new challenges start queuing up, it may be time to make some changes to reflect your changing community and the school’s changing priorities.

Once you’ve identified the tasks the board has to handle, you then have to ask whether your current board has the capacity to do them all. What gaps leap out at you?

Are the right people involved? Do you need any skills, or any perspectives, that aren’t currently represented?

Check out our board composition checklist to help answer the above question.

It’s always a good idea to have a trial bench waiting – people who have been on council subcommittees or working groups, or done ad hoc assistance with projects. The secretary should keep a list, and council members should add names when they can.

Succession planning also covers maintaining the council’s continuity. It’s not unheard of for the entire council to step down together, leaving the new members coming in cold. This is to be avoided if at all possible.

If it does happen, follow up with the members of the previous council privately and ask them for more information.

In general, the council is entitled to run its meetings as it pleases, and this means you can provide for members attending by phone or over the internet. There are some boundaries; the link has to be through “technology that allows that member and the members present at the meeting to clearly and simultaneously communicate with each other”. You have to be able to talk at the same time, which rules out email and Facebook, and during the time allotted for the meeting, so you can’t run a Twitter thread over several days. (Your constitution may provide for circulating motions, which would allow these technologies, but that’s a bit different.)

New technologies have many other things to offer. You could promote accountability by putting the video of the council online (with provision for going into confidential session if anything particularly sensitive comes up). You should be circulating council papers electronically to members for comment before the vote. The school’s web offerings should be under constant review to ensure that they display the shared vision and goals to the school community in a variety of ways.

Consider filling council positions through online elections, making it easier to reach your voting base and giving everybody more room to set out their platforms.

Consider online polling to see where your community stands on current issues. Every school should put resources into a digital communication strategy.

You will increasingly be able to download data on the school’s performance in real time. You will be able to access online training to cover gaps in your competence. You will be exposed to the opinions of millions of people, some of whom may have the answers you seek.

Schools increasingly emphasise a more collaborative approach to education. In place of a stand-alone school, possibly in a win-or-lose competition with other schools, is an emphasis on strong clusters and networks of schools. A more collaborative approach may mean:

• building stronger links between the vertical parts of education (e.g. school clusters; primary and secondary schools working together to develop P-12 schooling; or learning communities involving TAFE colleges, universities or kindergartens)
• building horizontal links with the community (e.g. families, parents/carers, health agencies, workplaces, businesses, community organisations, and groups such as sporting clubs)
• sharing resources such as sport and performing arts facilities.

A school council’s partnership work may include exploring what is being done currently and what could be developed further in:

• working closely with families and building home–school links
• working closely with health services and local workplaces
• sharing good practice in P-12 clusters and regional networks
• developing primary-secondary school links via middle years work
• partnerships with kindergartens and universities and colleges.

A school council may develop a partnerships policy and establish a team to help progress such work.

Some schools are working to create P-12 partnerships that involve a learning community or cluster of primary and secondary schools. A P-12 approach takes shape when primary and secondary educators and schools work toward a shared view of learning, and a seamless curriculum that involves the pooling of teachers’ expertise and skills across the pre-school, primary and secondary sectors.

Key questions to ask include:

• What is P-12 schooling and what kind of P-12 schooling may work for us?
• What is the potential of P-12 schooling to improve learning outcomes for students?
• What is the relevance of P-12 schooling for all schools?

There are various types of governance and collaboration across two or more schools:

• A loose collaboration or cluster of schools. Each school has its own council, but has representatives on a joint committee. The schools may work together towards some shared goals. There may be other sharing.
• A ‘soft’ governance federation. Each school has its own council. Some powers and responsibilities may be developed through a joint committee. There may be emphasis on shared goals through a joint plan.
• A ‘hard’ governance federation. There is a single council. It is shared by all schools. All schools share goals. Schools have separate budgets, but importance is given to pooling resources across the schools.

Such arrangements can break down some of the needless competition for enrolments. They enable the sharing of expertise, skills, resources, networks and good practice between schools. Any such initiative should be a ‘bottom up’ process that empowers members of the school community.