The long-serving governor who helped take Yavneh to the top

Yavneh College’s triumph as the top non-selective state school in England in the recent Sunday Times ‘Parent Power’ survey did not come out of the blue.

The Borehamwood school has been a success story since it opened in autumn 2006, achieving Ofsted outstanding status within a couple of years and having the grade confirmed in 2011.

When Prince Charles visited in 2017, he remarked: “I realise what a truly remarkable place it is.”

Its consistent excellence is in no small part due to a continuity of leadership, with just two headteachers in 15 years and stability within the governing body.

Sue Nyman, chairman of the college and then of the multi-academy trust that incorporated it, has just stepped down after 11 years at the helm. Given the demands on governors these days, it is a period of service beyond the call of duty.

She may have been fortunate in having a “great team” around her, but as she said: “We make our own luck. One of the first things I did when I became chair was to be very strategic. If you are on the board, you have to have a role. 

“Therefore, when we subsequently recruited people, they had to have a skill or something to contribute. We review the skills on the board every year.”

She said she had experience of sitting on boards where no one did very much, but being a school governor meant  being prepared to do far more than turning up for a few meetings a year .

Sometimes, her responsibilities called on her to devote one or two days a week to the school, at other times a few hours. In recent years, the workload was spread more evenly with the creation of the Multi Academy Trust (MAT) as both the college and Yavneh Primary have their own subsidiary boards. 

As head of risk for the advisory practice of leading accountants Grant Thornton, governance, she said, was  “what I do in my day job”.

She became involved with the school even before it opened its gates. “I was headhunted as an accountant because most of the people involved were lawyers, and I was already a governor to another school,” she said.

Situated in the heart of Hertfordshire’s still expanding Jewish population, Yavneh is very much a community school. “We do have more parents who are governors — that is different from parents who are elected as governors — that’s us bringing parents in,” she said. 

But there are some duties, such as disciplinary appeals, which a parent or staff governor cannot easily perform. That is why it is sensible to draw on people from outside the vicinity as well, as she is herself; she lives in Swiss Cottage. “I never wanted to be a governor of a school where my children went to,” she said.

The opening of a primary school next to the college in 2016 — a long-held ambition — was one of the highlights of her tenure. That too gained outstanding Ofsted status in 2019, and both schools are ranked outstanding for Jewish studies by the Board of Deputies inspection service, Pikuach.

With around three applicants for each of its 150 places, the college remains heavily oversubscribed. As in several other years, it opened a bulge class of 30 last September — an arrangement it is working to make permanent.

Local demographics make a plausible case for another Jewish primary school in the area. While this is not on the trust’s own agenda for the moment, that is “not something we would not consider”.

Her calm disposition would be recognised by anyone who has had dealings with her. And, like anyone in her role, it has not been all plain sailing. Changes to admissions rules a few years ago were hotly contested and led to “a very unpleasant personal challenge”.

While Yavneh has welcomed royalty and education ministers on its campus, what has most “touched my heart” are events such as the open evenings for new parents or school plays.

When The Times recently featured a luxury home in Hertfordshire in its property pages and mentioned local amenities, she was gratified to see that the first school listed was Yavneh College.

When she first became chair, Yavneh’s first chairman Malcolm Gordon remained around for a year, providing valuable advice. She will do likewise, chairing the Yavneh Foundation Trust, which is responsible for collecting the £1,450 annual voluntary contributions from parents for Jewish studies.

In a report last year, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that one of the areas hit by the financial fallout from the pandemic were voluntary contributions.

It’s been “a tough call but we’ve tightened up” on their collection. “There’s much more focus on personal contact with people.” 

She’s had conversations with people who live in a nice house with two four by fours in the drive who have told her,  “‘My son’s barmitzvah is in two months time at the Grove [ a local hotel], I’m not paying a penny of voluntary contribution.’ I don’t understand the morality of that.

“Often we find people who really can’t afford anything who’ll say ‘I will give you five pounds a month’ because that’s their pride in giving that.”

While “nudging” payments from parents has reaped benefits, “you have to be careful not to go too far”.

She left the chair at the end of December with “an enormous sense of pride in what we’ve done”. She has every confidence in her successor, Jo Grose, a parent at the school, who will bring a more local perspective. “I have no concern handing over the mantle to her.”