25 July 2025
Originally featured in FE week; a conversation with Liz Bromley, NCG CEO and Paul Aristides, Anderson Quigley partner.
FE colleges have honed strong, diverse governance rooted in community, efficiency, and accountability, while university boards struggle with financial tunnel vision; appointing college leaders onto HE boards could be part of the solution.
It is not surprising that colleges and college groups have focused on the constitution of their governance arrangements and have sought executive search to support them in finding the best board members around, as NCG has done. This approach can build a more diverse board model that challenges the sector to consider what great governance can look like.
Increasingly, FE boards demonstrate a rich professional diversity, with connections to place, and a varied strategic outlook suffused with community engagement and commitment. However, board culture arguably is even more important than individuals. And the role of governance lead and chair working together is all important.
University boards may have a number of alumni who make it look and sound the same, and there can be a bias towards investment/finance experience. With university boards focused on the finances and estate development, the connection with and awareness of the education or student experience can be limited to a student representative or a student voice report on the agenda.
As can be seen currently, there has been a lack of awareness of policy development and external risks which can impact on universities. With greater regulation and compliance demanded by the Office for Students, the emphasis has to be shared more evenly. This can only be done if there are Board members who understand this, because of their own background and professional experience.
There is a view held that vice chancellors like to keep their boards at a distance and seek to ‘manage’ them, rather than truly embracing the intent of governance and the purpose of the board. University executive teams are losing out when they fail to draw on the talents of their boards. As universities struggle to cope, some have argued that it has been a failure of governance that has led to this situation, as opposed to considering whether it is the approach to governance that has enabled crises to develop.
Given the record number of colleges that have achieved good and outstanding judgements in recent inspections, it should be recognised that evidence of good governance always plays a key role in these successes.
Moves from within the FE sector itself to create better governance structures show how some colleges recognise and welcome the impact of good governance. Again, the sector has slowly started to appreciate that the role of the director of governance is crucial in ensuring both the executive and non-executive are connected and working effectively and that the board culture is one that supports high performance. However, there is often a lack of innovation in governance. And sometimes colleges might be missing a trick in how they use advisory groups/key individuals to help challenge and shape strategy.
We see a much greater understanding of place, community, business and stakeholder management in FE, than many universities – who have to work on their ‘civic university charter’ rather than simply being the ‘community asset’ that defines FE Colleges. FE has historically also done well at finding efficiencies and pragmatically engaging in mergers.
One way for universities to enhance their governance is to appoint FE leaders to their board. Serving college principals and CEOs (or recently retired) bring huge value around coping with increased regulation/inspection, finding efficiencies, especially with teaching and learning and curriculum design, and collaboration/mergers/restructures.
AQ has recently supported universities with some success in placing FE leaders onto boards. There has been a recognition from universities that we’ve worked with that FE leaders can strengthen relationships between the sectors. They provide challenge to the university’s relationship with place and business, enhance the relationship between board and executive, improve the management of increased regulation and funding challenges, working more closely with government, and more.
There has been a wave of college principals and CEOs retiring over the past few months, and we know that many would be keen to join a university board.
The impact that working in the FE sector has on senior leaders quickly translates into board ‘value-add’. Given the immense challenges that universities are now facing that input could be transformative, bringing purpose and success to university governance.
Why further education is becoming an attractive career move for higher education leaders
With over seventeen years of education recruitment experience, Paul specialises in executive search and selection for executive and non-executive level FE appointments and senior roles across schools and government bodies associated with FE and Skills. Actively supporting Principals in the FE sector and with wide reaching networks across education and government, he brings breadth as well as depth of understanding of the Skills system and the leadership challenges within it.
Paul joined AQ in 2024 after ten years at GatenbySanderson and, prior to that, six years at Veredus, all of which has been focused on supporting the education sector. His earlier career was also in education, working in higher education and professional education for ten years. Paul has led on some of the most significant FE/Skills CEO appointments of recent times, including the CEOs of Capital City College, NCG and Warwickshire College Group and the CEOs of the Education and Training Foundation, Student Loans Company, Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education and WorldSkills UK. Paul is a Trustee of Bridge Academy Trust, an eleven-school trust in Essex.
