Board games - Education governance vacancies

IT seems extraordinarily remiss of successive ministers for education that the boards of several important education agencies and colleges have been entirely or largely vacant for several months and, in some cases, for more than a year.

Among the bodies affected is the Higher Education Authority which hasn’t had a chairman since January, and has only half its board membership filled.

The HEA leads the strategic development of the higher education system and has statutory responsibility for the governance and regulation of higher education institutions.

The National Council for Special Education has had no board since the end of last year, while the Educational Research Centre still doesn’t have a board.

While an argument could be made for amalgamating the roles of some of these bodies, leaving them without proper governance mechanisms amounts to mistreatment.

It is often stated that one of the main reasons that multinational businesses locate here is because of the quality of our education system. We need to live up to that achievement.