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GOVERNORS' NEWS
NASG members receive the in-house journal, "Governors' News", five times a year. As well as the latest news and reviews on the latest developments across the profession, every issue contains special features designed to help support you in your professional capacity

GOVERNORS' NEWS - November 2003

CONTENTS PAGE

A VIEW FROM THE (ACTING) CHAIR
RESPECT, MAN

Governors this autumn may have been feeling that they have being playing Twister. For those whose children missed out on this particular treat, it is a game where you spread a plastic sheet with numbered squares on the floor. You throw a dice and place one of your limbs (usually a hand or foot) on the square indicated. In no time at all your body has been rearranged into positions only the young or yoga enthusiasts can sustain and is wrapped around the other player.

The many new considerations for governing bodies could easily produce equally contorted positions if not tackled with a very clear head. Do you consider reconstituting straight away? Have you begun to think about the appropriate size of governing body? Did you sort out how to elect your chair and vice-chair? Have you had a thorough think about what you might delegate to committees and individuals and what should be decided by the whole governing body? Have you reassigned the '24 tasks' from teachers? Are you underway with ensuring your head's work and life are in balance? Should you be federating with the school down the road? Have you decided on your Freedom of Information scheme? Have you considered forming any companies, and if not, why not? Where were you on the night of the 24th?

While you will have been able to defer some of these, most need an immediate decision and action, but if you have tried to do them all at once you will by now be in a tangled heap off the board.

With this surge in initiatives have come renewed calls from some quarters for governors to receive payment for their time and thought. NAGM has never been in favour of this, nor are we proposing to change our minds. It might be tempting to think that cash would make it all bearable, but would it really? There are three grounds for thinking it would not: practicality, personality and principle.

In practice, payment would not be the sword that cuts the Gordian knot. If anything, the complexities of the role would grow as governor representatives would have fewer grounds for complaining about the slew of initiatives as it would be pointed out that governors are getting some of those precious education pounds. In reality, unless it was found that every school in the country was built over an oil well, the sums on offer could never be large, certainly never enough to compensate for the time put in.

The psychology says that once you introduce money you introduce resentments and jealousies. Money may not be the root of all evil, but it lies underneath a lot of it. There is no sensible system that could be devised that would pay each governor according to what they do, but all would receive the same. That leads swiftly to the perception that I work extremely hard, you keep one committee ticking over and he only turns up to every other governing body meeting.

Proponents argue that chairs should get more than the rest of the governing body. This would easily lead to chairs taking on even more work, either because they are driven by guilt to justify their extra payment, or because everybody else holds back from volunteering because the one we used to call Mr Muggins, but is now known as That Lucky B, gets paid more. And would you have the same respect for the chair if you suspected that he or she was only doing it for the dosh?

Thirdly, the principle of the unpaid volunteer is one that governors ought to be championing, and be proud of. Perhaps amazingly, as it was introduced by a centralising government and has been developed by another one that likes to control, the present system of school governance is a great exercise in democracy. Today's education determines tomorrow's society, and yet an enormous amount of power here has been placed in the hands of ordinary people. These are people who are doing it without any prospect of personal gain, because they believe it is important, because they are willing to give up their time for the benefit of children, because they think service to the community is valuable. We worry about governor vacancies, but perhaps we ought instead to be marvelling that there are so many people who will give up their time for nothing other than satisfaction.

Teachers complained for a long time that their profession had been downgraded in public esteem, and eventually, slowly, their status started to rise. Governors too need respect, not cash handouts. What we donÕt want is sniping from headteacher unions that governors 'meddle', or lip service consultation from government. What we want is to be listened to when we say that this is counter-productive, or that that will create an unnecessary workload, or that the other is ill-thought out, or even that another is a first-rate idea. We deserve it, because we're worth it.

Stephen Adamson

Jane Phillips, NAGM Chair, is in France for six months.
Stephen Adamson, Vice-chair, is Acting Chair for this period.

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WHATEVER HAPPENED
TO COOKING?

What goes on in your school cookery room? Jan Hafner reopens the door.

Radio 4 recently ran a programme on students' diets and eating habits. It began by reminding us that at this time of year thousands of new students will have just left home to go to university and that the majority will be coping, for the first time, with planning, shopping for and cooking, their own food. Most will have studied Food Technology at school, it continued, but Food Technology lessons teach children to design the packaging for a pizza, not how to make pizza. What followed was fairly standard fare, a bit of a plug for a new 'student' cookbook and a cooking lesson by the author featuring some grateful students. It was that dismissal of Food Technology teaching, presented as an incontrovertible statement of fact, that struck me - that's how it is and letÕs carry on with the rest of the programme.

As a Food Tech' teacher myself, I'd have to argue that it's not quite true. Food teachers work hard to include as much practical cooking as possible, both at Key Stage 3 and in GCSE teaching. We want our pupils to learn to cook and to plan a healthy diet. However, there's a lot more that the National Curriculum requires us to include and it often feels like we have to use all our ingenuity to be able to justify teaching children everyday food handling skills. In short, learning to make Spaghetti Bolognese should not have to include two hours of design sheets, a production flowchart and the packaging and label for a 'Pasta Product.' A shortage of well-qualified Food Tech' teachers is leading to the subject being taught in the earlier years by non-specialists, who are more than happy to take this less practical approach. At a school I came across earlier this year, an entire term of Food Tech' for years 6 to 8 had included no practical cooking at all, yet the D&T teacher was convinced that his lessons still met all the required NC criteria!

On its introduction, the delivery of food teaching through Design & Technology offered a fresh approach to what had, in many cases, been a worthy but dull subject - ask anyone over 30 if cooking lessons were fun, or if they were able to introduce their own ideas and experiment with recipes. A change was due and D&T remains a great way to help children to develop self confidence and to tackle new subjects and skills in a logical way.

Nevertheless, the public perception of the way in which we are preparing children to feed themselves as adults, is that Food Tech' lessons are not doing the job at all. While examination requirements continue to influence what is taught in the preceding years, we must look to the demands of GCSE Food Technology for an explanation. Here the focus is principally on the large-scale manufacturing process.

Food teaching has always included some examination of ready-prepared products - what used to be called 'convenience' foods - before convenience became the norm and home-cooked meals were sidelined by food manufacturers as 'inconvenience' food. This emphasis on mass-produced food products has resulted in an attitude that has been very successfully absorbed by our young adults. When one of the students interviewed on Radio 4 claimed he could make Spaghetti Bolognese, it was only when pressed more closely by the interviewer did he mention that the sauce was from a jar!

If he had studied GCSE Food Tech' then he would know all about market research, industrial production systems, sales and marketing, and would have spent most of his final year of study on a piece of individual coursework that replicated the commercial production of a product as closely as possible. If he had been guided into choosing to 'Design and make a vegetarian main course product' then he would have learned a range of skills in meal preparation, but nothing about meat dishes. If his choice had been 'Design and make a high energy bar' then all his year 11 practical sessions would have been spent making biscuits and tray-bakes!

Design & Technology teaches an independent approach to problem solving and develops organisational skills applicable to the management of any production system. It can be the first step towards a career in the expanding food industry and stretches even the most able, whatever their future career aspirations. What it doesn't do, is allow teachers to prepare their pupils to plan, shop and cook for themselves or allow the time to teach them a full range of food preparation skills. Much of the current content and coursework demands are beyond the ability of the less able. Those most likely to be thinking of a career involving 'hands-on' food production are swiftly disillusioned by the subject and become de-motivated into underachievement.

The good news is that learning opportunities are now expanding for post-14 students. From 2004, far greater freedom of choice will mean, among other things, that pupils will not be obliged to follow a Design & Technology course to GCSE level, if further study is not appropriate for their aspirations or abilities. Alternatively, pupils may wish to continue D&T in one of the other focus areas and to learn about food through a different course instead of studying another (now non-compulsory) subject. Forward-looking schools are already preparing to offer alternative qualifications. A course that is already running successfully and is designed to build on D&T teaching in Key Stages 1-3 is GCSE Catering from the Welsh examination board.

Laura Cheney, Head of Department at Ferndown Upper School in Dorset, is offering GCSE Catering to year 12 from September '04 and hopes to include it in the options for year 10 the following year. She explains, 'GCSE Catering will give our students real choice. It offers the opportunity to gain another GCSE, which may be important for entry to further education and yet it is focussed on a popular vocational subject - providing motivation for pupils of all abilities. The course specification requires pupils to 'develop practical catering capabilities' which means time to teach the whole range of food preparation skills.' Don't be misled by the course title. 'Catering' does place teaching and tasks in the context of the workplace, but it's not necessarily on the large-scale. Task suggestions all include a requirement to cook for the needs of others but skills can just as easily be applied to cooking for friends or family. Examples of tasks include: 'Prepare and serve two dishes to illustrate the different uses of pasta suitable for a Bella Pasta restaurant; Plan a selection of dishes that you could serve in a school salad bar; A local hotel is taking part in an international week and you have been asked to prepare a selection of dishes from a country/countries of your choice.'

As Laura Cheney commented, 'Tasks that can be tackled by pupils of all abilities, creative, fun and teaching real skills for life.' Now isn't that what education is supposed to be about!

See http://www.wjec.co.uk/gcatering.html for full specification details.

Jan Hafner is currently teaching Key stage 3-4 Design & Technology and writes on a wide range of educational and other issues.

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HEALTHY EATING AT SCHOOL

The Department of Health tells us what is going on and how we can help.

Since the autumn term began the media has carried a number of stories highlighting concerns about the nutritional value of both packed lunches and school dinners.

Despite the reports, many positive schemes are underway to improve the food children eat in school and governors can do a lot to encourage their leadership teams to adopt the pioneering initiatives.

We know from research that there are serious issues to address. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey (2000) found that:

• children only eat two portions of fruit and vegetables per day, compared with expert recommendations of five portions;
• children's consumption of fruit and vegetables had fallen since 1983 when they were averaging around three portions a day
• one in five children eat no fruit in a week and three in five eat no leafy green vegetables;
• children in low-income groups are 50% less likely to eat fruit and vegetables.

A recent study of school lunch boxes by the Food Standards Agency mirrored the national findings. Nine out of 10 packed lunches contained foods that were too high in saturated fat, salt and sugar. In fact only 21% met the minimum national standards set for primary school meals which must include one portion of fruit, vegetables, milk (or a dairy item), protein and a starchy food such as bread, pasta or rice.

But as part of the overall government focus on healthy eating there is some really positive news.

The Department of Health's National School Fruit Scheme (NSFS) is the biggest single initiative in child nutrition since the introduction of free school milk in the 1940s.

With money from the New Opportunities Fund, its aim is to increase consumption of fruit by school children and to help establish it as a regular part of their diet. The Department of Health commitment is that by the end of 2004, every child aged four to six in infant schools will be entitled to a free piece of fruit each school day, as part of a national campaign to improve the diet of children. The scheme is part of the '5 A DAY' programme which encourages everyone to eat at least five portions a day of a variety of fruit and vegetables.

The £42 million National School Fruit Pilot scheme is funded by the biggest of the lottery good causes distributors, the New Opportunities Fund, and aims to prevent cancer, heart disease and strokes developing later life. It builds on pilots already undertaken by the Department of Health for the National School Fruit Scheme rolling out in 2004. It is thought to be the first and, as yet, the only scheme anywhere in the world to attempt to provide free fruit daily on a universal entitlement.

Pilot schemes have been run in schools in each region to identify the best approach, before introducing the scheme across England. The pilot evaluation confirms that the NSFS operates successfully and is popular with pupils and teachers alike.

• The majority of the children involved look forward to receiving the fruit and many had overcome their reluctance to eat fruit and tried new types of fruit.
• In general, consumption levels were high throughout the pilot although some fruits were more popular than others. Bananas were most popular, followed by apples, satsumas/clementines and pears.
• Where fruit was consumed in the classroom, it contributed to a calming, sharing time, which had an effect on the ethos of the whole class.
• The majority of staff believed that the scheme was contributing to teaching and learning about healthy eating. In some cases, the scheme was being used in other areas of the curriculum, such as science, numeracy and literacy.
• All of the pilot schools wanted to continue with the scheme, and although they suggested possible changes which would improve the operation of the scheme, these changes were not essential to ensure their continued involvement.
• Despite initial concerns, the general consensus amongst school staff was that the operation of the scheme was taking less time than anticipated.

Now over 800,000 children receive fruit. It is being developed region by region. Four regions are currently live, London, East Midlands, West Midlands and the North West, and the others will follow. More information is available from the '5 A DAY' website www.doh.gov.uk/fiveaday

The Food in Schools Programme is another activity responding to the concerns around food and nutrition of children. This is a joint venture between the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills.

The programme is developing a whole range of nutrition-related activities and projects in schools to complement and add value to the wide variety of other initiatives in schools.

The Department of Health strand is made up of eight projects which follow the child through the school day - healthier cookery clubs, breakfast clubs, tuck shops, vending machines and lunch boxes as well as water provision, growing clubs and the dining room environment.

Phase 1, which is currently underway, builds on good practice and consults children, schools, caterers and other key stakeholders on issues such as healthier product choice, marketing, barriers to success, curriculum links and resource issues. Stakeholder involvement and input is vital to the success of the Programme with sustainability and ease of implementation also key.

Regional momentum around each of the pilot projects is growing.

'One important aspect of this initiative is that it gives control back to schools so that they decide what goes in their vending machines,' said Jan Yates, the Food and Health Lead for the East of England. 'We're really hoping to bring about a revolution in vending in schools, promoting healthy eating messages and we will be closely monitoring the impact of this pioneering project.'

The results of all eight projects will be brought together and made available to schools across England from the beginning of 2005 to assist them in providing a wider range of healthier foods for pupils.

Both the NSFS and the Food in Schools Programme support the healthy eating strand of the National Healthy Schools Standard. Governors can contributed to the health of a whole generation by ensuring they are implemented in each and every school.

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