Clerk to Company Secretary: A Development Programme

A contract was awarded for the development and delivery of a Clerk to Company Secretary programme. The Further Education (FE) and training landscape is changing and Area Reviews are likely to result in 50-100 colleges involved in mergers. Mergers create more top-end leadership roles and bigger institutions on multiple dispersed sites. In other areas, Federations are likely to form, creating new CEO positions with individual Principals serving beneath them (as have already formed in a small number of cases in recent years). New models of corporate governance may also emerge for these very large complex institutions. With this the governance role - role of the clerk as a company secretary/governance professional - will become of more importance and more challenging. The role of company secretary will be less about administrative duties and more about strategic influence and governance expertise to the Board. The Foundation's 2016-17 funding agreement states the need to support early preparation across the FE sector for implementation of the Skills Plan by providing support for workforce development in key areas. Part of this was the need to develop a Clerk to Company Secretary Programme that takes into account the changing structures and responsibilities of the role. This tender develops and delivers a Clerk to Company Secretary programme, targeting a mix of 100 new and existing clerks. The Foundation sought to achieve a sustainable, high quality induction and development programme that saw the clerking role transformed to that of a governance professional.