Sharon Adebola

A 22-YEAR-OLD woman called this week for greater diversity among school governors – but that getting more young people interested was a good starting point.

Sharon Adebola is on the governing board of Fleet Primary School in Hampstead after a council drive to get more under-30s involved with its “Young Governors” programme.

She said: “The programme was advertised to me as a great opportunity for young people to exercise their voice and accountability within school governance and I have always had an interest in education so I thought this was right up my street as I could foresee a future there.”

She added: “The role of a governor is primarily to bring accountability to the school body and the role of a governor is to foresee things that the school body themselves may not be able to see.

“I think it’s also about having the best interests of the children at heart and obviously for teacher.”

Ms Adebola added: “One thing that was mentioned in the training was that the majority of school governors are firstly above the age of 63 and they mainly come from a white background and I feel like we need much more diversity in ethnicity and age.

In order to tackle this, it’s all about information and targeting the advertisement to get more people aware of these opportunities.

I think there were times where the idea of a governor is someone who is older and from a white background, but we’re also in a society that is changing and that’s obviously reflecting on school governance and that’s really good.”

Today (Thursday) is Governors Awareness Day.

Camden’s schools chief Councillor Marcus Boyland said: “It is so important that we get different voices around the table to ensure that the needs of all students are heard and that decisions are made with equity and inclusivity in mind.”