We are once again stepping up to fill a gap in official national data. For six consecutive years, the National Governance Association (NGA) has been running a survey of school governors and trustees in partnership with Tes, and for the last three years, we have had more than 5,000 respondents.

Governors are an extraordinary bunch. A volunteer army of 300,000, giving up their time to act as the guardians of state schools.

And yet their role is undervalued, underloved and under-resourced. But what we see in the NGA-Tes survey 2017 is a picture of a group of people who know a huge amount about state schools and see their role being overlooked at almost every turn. They reserve their biggest worry not for themselves but for the sector, schools and children who are ultimately in their trust.

Let’s be honest: despite years of attempting to improve the working conditions for governors, the picture is still far from perfect.

The survey says...

More than half of governors and trustees say that it is difficult to recruit new volunteers to the role. And almost one-third (31.4 per cent) have two or more vacancies on their governing board. Many are not taking advantage of the national volunteer banks freely available (please try inspiringgovernance.org if you are one of those struggling to fill vacancies).

Only 3 per cent oppose high-quality induction training being mandatory for new governors and trustees. We repeat the importance of this until we are blue in the face, but the Government is averse to making anything more compulsory in schools, despite the fact that it is for magistrates and many other volunteers. In the meantime - and it might be rather a long meantime - we just need to make the obligation to undertake induction training clear at school level.

When you consider the amount of time volunteers are giving to the system - at a conservative estimate, school governors and trustees contribute in kind in excess of £1 billion per year to the education budget in England - the amount invested in their training and development appears even more paltry.

Contrary to popular belief, four in five of those governing are, or used to be, managers, directors, senior officials or professionals. A significant minority of those in work are not receiving time off to govern and, of those that are, almost one quarter are taking unpaid leave.

However, payment for governing is supported by only a minority of governors and trustees (27 per cent) and this figure is not increasing with time, despite the frequent, but unevidenced, suggestions from certain high-profile educationalists that this might improve governance.

Almost three in 10 governors and trustees say that their responsibilities are not manageable in 20 days per year. Concerns about the time commitment are the biggest barrier to taking on the hugely important role of chair.

The survey shows governors to be concerned about the work-life balance of schools leaders and teachers, but their own work-life balance is ignored. My suggestion to the DfE that they need to take seriously the workload of governors has not yet been taken up.

This is all despite the difficult decisions many governors are charged with making in the current circumstances.

Funding, one of the governing board’s three chief official responsibilities, is very tough. Nearly half (42.5 per cent) of respondents reported making posts redundant last year - this had rocketed from 25.9 per cent the previous year. Nearly half (46.9 per cent) of schools have already reduced the number of support staff and 29.9 per cent have reduced the number of teachers.

There were also a range of other reactions to reducing funding, which included: cutting spending on buildings and maintenance (39.8 per cent), spending on staff continuing professional development (27.2 per cent), extra-curricular activities (20.8 per cent), the number of subjects on offer (19.8 per cent), pastoral support (18 per cent), and the number of qualifications (15 per cent) and 27.2 per cent increasing class sizes. A similar additional number said they were going to have to take these sort of measures in the next two years.

Funding pressure

These are stark, stark decisions for people who volunteered to improve education for children. Only one-fifth of governors are now confident that funding pressures can be managed without any adverse impact on that education. With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that only one-fifth opposed the principle of a new national funding formula.

A very loud message is coming through from governors and trustees, once again calling on the government to provide stability for the education system and ensure that the expertise of education professionals is valued and listened to. This has been said for the last few years and was reported to then-education secretary Nicky Morgan when she addressed NGA’s summer conference two years ago.

At that point, the removal of national curriculum levels was causing much discombobulation. Even now, only a minority of governors and trustees (16.9 per cent) see their removal as a positive change, although 42 per cent haven’t made up their minds.

And that’s before we even begin to look at the kinds of analysis and decisions that will be made by the many governors who are dealing with the fall out from the new, harder A-level and GCSE regimes, coming as they do with Progress 8 and Ebacc.

With these and many other challenges in mind, we have invited Justine Greening to our annual conference this November to listen to the range of concerns direct from governors and trustees in ensuring a good education for our children.

Given the range of challenges uncovered by the 2017 NGA-Tes survey, it should not be too much to expect Ms Greening to show up.

Emma Knights is chief executive of the National Governance Association