Recruiting a clerk to governors or governance professional can be tricky as it’s a niche role and many schools only offer small contracts.
This article helps you find a clerk to governors, hold interviews to discover the best candidate and advises on what to do if you’re unable to recruit a clerk.
Advertising For A Clerk
Here are some places that accept adverts for clerks. If you know of other places to advertise please contact me and I will add the details.
The titles “clerk to governors” and “governance professional” tend to be used interchangeably. Governance professional is the title that the DfE have preferred over the past few years, but many schools still advertise for a clerk.
- The National Governance Association allow schools to advertise clerking roles.
- The National Association of School and College Clerks also let schools advertise for a clerk.
- Eteach contains listings for clerks.
- The DfE Teaching Vacancy service contains listings for school support staff, including clerks.
- The TES (Times Educational Supplement) accepts listing for clerks.
- Your LA Governor Services department may provide clerks through their own clerking service, although it will likely be more expensive than hiring a clerk directly.
- Contact local schools to ask if their current clerk would like more work. Many clerks work for multiple schools and are happy to work at both maintained schools or academies.
Who interviews the clerk?
It tends to be the headteacher and chair of governors who interview the clerk. In an academy trust they may be joined by the head of governance or whoever takes the lead on governance issues.
Remember that the clerk or governance professional is not line managed by the headteacher. They are employed by the governing board (not the head) and should be line managed by the chair of governors.
Clerk To Governors Job Description and Person Specification
A job description and person specification for a clerk is available from Southampton LA. (Look for “governance professional, formerly clerk to governors”).
I also have a page that describes the role of the clerk in detail.
Training For Clerks
Ask A Clerk provides a training course for maintained school clerks which covers the role of governors and clerks, proceedings at meeting, voting, conflicts of interest, electing the chair and vice-chair and much more.
Questions To Ask At Interview
I have a separate article suggesting questions to ask at a clerk to governors interview.
Tasks At Interview
To test a potential clerk’s skills at interview you could ask candidates to:
- provide a copy of their minutes (if they have worked as a clerk before)
- watch a short video and minute the key points
- summarise a long headteacher’s report in one side of A4
- improve the spelling, grammar, flow and formatting of a poorly written set of minutes you provide
- answer a quiz on the school governance regulations (maintained schools) or your own articles of association/terms of reference (academies)
- write a letter to a governor telling them they have been disqualified for failing to attend meetings
- write a letter to a governor telling them they have broken the code of conduct and the board have voted to suspend them.
What happens if we cannot recruit a clerk?
Every maintained school and academy trust needs a clerk or governance professional, so you need to keep looking.
In the short-term one of your governors/trustees can take the minutes. This really is only a short-term solution as it adds an additional burden to the governor or trustee, makes it difficult for them to take part in discussions and means you do not have access to the clerk’s advice.
If you’re struggling to recruit I would review your job advert, salary offer and job description to see if you can make the role more enticing.
I often see job adverts for clerks that are confusing, uninviting or sometimes even needlessly scary! Here are some common mistakes I see schools make in their adverts.
Hiding The Salary
The job advert says something like “Salary is £15-£16 per hour depending on experience and we hold six full board meetings per year.”
Okay…but how much is the salary? You need to say how many hours of work are allocated for each meeting. Eight hours for each full board meeting at £15 per hour would be £720 per year, whereas 14 hours per meeting would be £1260 per year. That’s a vast difference.
To properly explain the salary each advert for a clerk must include:
- the number of hours included in the contract (eg: 120 hours annually)
- the number of full board meetings per year
- the number of committee meetings per year
- the pay per hour
- whether overtime is paid to cover other duties (training, admin, governor panels, extraordinary meetings etc).
When deciding how many hours to allocate per meeting the minimum allocation often recommended is 10 hours per full board meeting and seven hours per committee meeting.
Suspiciously Low Number of Annual Hours
I recently saw a school advertise for a clerk to work for just 60 hours per year. This was to clerk six full board meetings, so I imagine they’ve allocated 10 hours per meeting.
That’s fine in itself, but the advert made no mention of additional hours allocated for training, extraordinary meetings, governor panels, keeping records, offering advice, updating the website, begging governors to fill in their declaration of interests form for 2023 before the form for 2024 becomes due…
It is very helpful to tell applicants whether overtime will be paid for additional work. You also need to check how the number of hours have been calculated. Were they calculated 15 years ago and no-one has reviewed them since? Do they really reflect the amount of work you are asking the clerk to do?
It’s a good idea to ask your previous clerk whether they feel they were being paid for all the hours they were required to work – you might be surprised at the answer.
Expecting Unreasonable Flexibility
Clerks do need to be flexible in their approach to working hours as boards may need to change meeting dates or hold meetings at short notice.
However, if you are trying to employ someone who can work at 8am on a Monday, 7pm on a Tuesday and 1pm on a Wednesday you may find that a struggle.
Almost all clerks have to take on extra work around their clerking, so if you’re offering three hours of work per week and want complete flexibility in return you may need to relax your requirements.
Terrifying The Life Out Of People
I almost didn’t apply for the first ever clerking role I held because it sounded pretty daunting.
Phrases like “The clerk advises the governing body on legislative issues” can make it sound like you need a barrister, not a clerk. I also once saw an ad that said the job was “not for the faint of heart”!
Now, you do need to tell candidates that they will be expected to do more than take notes, but do make it clear that no legal qualifications are needed and full training will be available (and that you will of course pay for the time spent undertaking that training).
It also helps to mention any sources of support you have as a governing body. For example, if you’re members of the NGA, GovernorHub Knowledge or your LA provides clerking support forums.
Treating Committee Meetings As Minor Add-Ons
I once enquired about a clerking role which said the school ran six full board meetings per year “plus committees”. They were paying a fixed number of hours per year.
When I asked for more information it turned out they held six full board meetings and ten committee meetings per year, with all 16 meetings to be covered by the fixed hours contract.
I’ve seen other schools do this too, ignoring committee meetings in their adverts because they seem to believe they take far less time to clerk than full board meetings and the full board meetings are the main part of the job.
It’s true that committee meetings are often shorter than full board meetings, but they can also be quite complex. Anyone who thinks committee meetings are a doddle has never minuted a finance committee! Plus there is still the usual work of drafting the agenda, sorting out papers, offering advice and so on.
An experienced clerk may be suspicious of an advert that carefully explains how many full board meetings you hold but fails to mention committees. (Of course, if you run the circle model of governance you won’t hold committee meetings, so do mention that in your ad if that’s your set-up.)
