In the majority of cases governor positions cannot be shared, so you must have one person filling one vacancy. The only exception to this is when you have co-headteachers in a job share, who both share the role of headteacher governor.
In all other cases the rule is one vacancy, one volunteer. So if you have one parent governor vacancy, for example, you can only fill it with one parent rather than two people sharing the position. It’s not possible to serve as half a governor!
People sometimes ask to share governor positions so they can reduce the amount of time spent volunteering but unfortunately this is not possible.
What happens if we have a co-headteacher?
This is the only exception to the rule that governor positions cannot be shared. If you have two co-heads they will share the one position of headteacher governor.
They will have one vote between them so will have to decide who can cast that vote at meetings, or perhaps decide to alternate using the vote. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem as you would hope the co-heads will agree on most issues!
It may sound unfair that the co-heads don’t get a vote each, but each school only has one headteacher governor position on its board (or one chief executive officer/principal position in academy trusts) so there is only one vote allocated to the head.
If both co-heads were given a vote each it would double the power of the headteacher governor position for no reason other than a job share is in place.
Assuming the co-heads would agree on most votes this would just add an extra vote in favour of the headteacher viewpoint each time. This would be problematic because one of the core functions of the governing body is to hold the head(s) to account.
Can link governor roles be shared?
Yes. Link governor roles can be shared, so you could have two link governors for SEND for example. They would need to agree how to share the work between them, perhaps using written terms of reference to record this.
It’s up to the governing body to decide how it distributes its work between all the link governors and committees, so it’s free to decide that there will be two link governors for a particular area and just one for another.
Can the role of chair of governors be shared?
Yes. Both the chair and vice-chair roles can be shared. It’s uncommon for the vice-chair role to be held jointly but fairly common for schools to have joint chairs. You could also have joint chairs or vice-chairs of committees.
Why can link roles and the chair be shared when governor positions cannot be?
When governors carry out link roles or chairing they are sharing out work that must be completed by the governing body as a whole. There are no rules that say the chair must be one person only or that link roles must be carried out by individuals. The governing body itself controls how the work gets done.
However, when a person joins the governing body they must fill a vacancy that exists in either a maintained school’s instrument of government, an academy trust’s articles of association (for the board of trustees) or an academy’s terms of reference (for local governing bodies).
These documents list the total number of governor positions available. A maintained school’s instrument of government might say for example that the board will consist of two parent governors, one LA governor, one staff governor, one headteacher governor and five co-opted governors.
The instrument will also list the total number of governors the school can have, so in the example in the previous paragraph the school’s instrument would say “the total number of governors shall be 10”.
If the school tried to allocate two people to the LA governor position that would not match the “one LA governor” that is set out in their instrument, nor the total number of governors they are allowed, because they would now have 11 governors rather than 10.
Even if the legal documents allowed for shared positions it would be very difficult in practice. If a governor only came to every other meeting they would miss a huge amount of information. If they came to all meetings and tried to cut down on school visits they would miss learning first-hand about the school.
The people sharing the position would also have to agree on how to cast their one vote each time. It’s likely that co-heads will agree most of the time but much less likely that two parent or LA governors will always agree.
Finally, even with just one vote between two people you could argue that they would still have more power over the board than a single person, because there would be two different voices to be heard and exert influence.