• There are some Parishes where no Incumbent is in place.
• Sometimes an Incumbent decides not to be Ex-Officio Foundation Governor.

In these scenarios, the Diocesan Board of Education works with the school and clergy to appoint a Temporary Ex-Officio Foundation Governor.

The Temporary Ex-Officio holds the office for a term of up to four years. 

The person who has been appointed to this temporary role may be required to relinquish the role if, during their term of office, an Incumbent is appointed who is willing to take up the role.

When an Incumbent decides not to take up the Ex-Officio Foundation Governor role, we ask them to recommend somebody to act temporarily in their place.

Where no recommendations are made, or when there is no Incumbent in the Parish, we contact the Local Mission Partnership or Rural Dean. 

The temporary Ex-Officio does not have to be a member of the clergy, although they should hold some responsibility in the Anglican church. They can be a lay minister, reader, children's leader or a churchwarden.

When a name is suggested, we contact the Archdeacon and seek their approval of the appointment.

It is entirely in the gift of the Archdeacon of that Archdeaconry to approve a temporary Ex-Officio appointment.

If approved, a letter and certificate are issued confirming the appointment. 

The DBE recognises that clergy often serve more than one parish and may find it difficult to serve as a governor alongside parish commitments. 

When a clergy person is considering taking up the ex-officio foundation governor role, it may be helpful to identify duties that are manageable for the ex-officio foundation governor, in the form of a working agreement setting out roles and responsibilities.  Please contact us if you would like to know more about this.

The following recommendations have been developed to help schools and clergy work together:

• Governing boards cannot reasonably expect their ex-officio clergy governor to attend governor meetings that are scheduled on the clergy person's regular day off, or on days that they do not normally work in their clergy role or if the time of the meeting clashes with fixed times of parish work.  To help with this, meeting dates should be agreed a year in advance. 

• Attendance at governor meetings needs to be negotiated in terms of what the clergy person can reasonably manage, as the attendance regulations do not apply to ex-officio governors.  

• The clergy person is not automatically expected to become Chair of Governors, or act as Interim Chair to fill a gap; we do not recommend that the clergy person takes on the additional demands of being Chair of Governors.

• The clergy person should not be automatically expected to take the lead of a major project such as school reorganisation.  

• The clergy person should not be expected to do all the work of foundation governor recruitment, as this is a collective responsibility of the governing board.