Category: Basic principles

The role of school governors has been gradually extended by successive Education Acts from 1870 onwards. As state schools are funded by the tax-payers, the idea is to have some public involvement in their running. This is not always met with enthusiasm by the teaching staff, but the duties required of governors are sufficiently demanding as to only attract the most committed, skilled and team-minded volunteers.

A school can have between nine and twenty governors. The headteacher is automatically on the board of governors. The other types of governor are staff, local authority, co-opted (usually with business expertise of some sort), possibly foundation (from a sponsoring company, if any) and parent. Each has a term of four years, which may be renewed.

Governors must attend training. They must also become members of committees dealing with particular aspects, such as finance, curriculum and building maintenance. They meet with the OfSTED inspectors, sit on staff interview panels, deal with disciplinary and safeguarding matters and write school policies and an annual report. Their role is described as being a “critical friend” to the headteacher. Perhaps that is why they are not paid!

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There is a fondly-held belief in the UK that we have ‘freedom of speech’ ~ in other words, there are no restrictions on what people can say or write. This has never been entirely true, of course, as there are censorship and libel laws, but today the principle of free speech is being sorely tested.

An old saying is that: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”.  This is rarely heard nowadays as the modern accusations of ‘political incorrectness’, ‘fake news’ and ‘hate speech’ seem to encompass any language which offends, denigrates, criticises or questions, as if this is somehow taboo or unnatural. We all know it is not.

Thankfully, another old saying which the Brits do still like to quote is :“I disapprove of what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it” (Evelyn Beatrice Hall, 1906).

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The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) is a step towards the idea of having ‘open’ government. It allows anyone, whether resident in the UK or not, to request information from any public authority or sub-contracted organisation that receives taxpayers’ money. It includes all types of recorded information.

Personal data is not covered by this Act ~ that is the remit of the Data Protection Act 2018.

Requests for information can be made without giving a reason and should be directed to the organisation in question. Unless there are grounds for not disclosing it, that organisation is obliged to supply it, no matter who the applicant is. Detailed advice can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

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Citizens Advice is a national charity, mainly funded by taxpayers, which gives advice on managing debt; applying for benefits; and housing, law, employment and consumer issues. There are over 300 Citizens Advice centres around the UK and their services are confidential and freely available to all residents in their local area. Some staff are paid employees while others are volunteers.

Requests for advice can be made by personal visit to a centre, or by telephone, email or webchat. The Citizens Advice website opens by asking which of the UK’s four constituent countries you live in, as the law can differ.

The service has been successfully operating since the day after WW2 was declared in 1939 and it is not an exaggeration to say that millions of people have been helped by the Citizens Advice organisation to sort out their problems.

(Image: Scottish Government at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Recycling items that are no longer wanted, or regarded as rubbish, became established as a part of everyday life in 2003, when the Household Waste Recycling Act was passed by the UK Parliament. From that time onwards, local Councils were obliged to provide recycling facilities and kerbside collections.

Since the widespread introduction of plastics in the 1960s, the amount of household waste has increased, putting landfill sites under pressure, hence the rapid realisation that recycling, where possible, has to be encouraged. The current slogan is:

Reduce, re-use, recycle

It is up to each Council to decide how to provide recycling arrangements, but they must try and meet a target percentage of recycled materials taken as part of the total waste. Some Councils require householders to separate materials themselves, e.g. into cardboard / paper / plastics / tins / food, etc., while others do most of the separation themselves.

(Image: Bob Harvey at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The ‘freedom of the press‘ means that newspapers and magazines can publish articles without any censorship or political interference from the Government. In Britain this has been a right since 1695.

It is not without its complexities, however. Editors are expected to be self-censoring in terms of libellous accusations, stories without evidence and intrusion into people’s privacy.  The ideal of the free flow of information is sometimes hard to achieve when faced with the pressure to make a profit, as the mainstream news publishers are, after all, big businesses. The similarity of wording in some stories also hint at a single feed and lack of real journalistic investigation.

The ‘freedom of the Press’, even with its deficiencies, does include the ability of  ‘alternative media’ organisations to put out articles on the internet, for instance, and it remains a basic principle of life in the UK.

(Image: Jon S at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)