TWO councillors have slated the calibre of school governors in the county.

Speaking at a meeting of Denbighshire County Council’s audit committee on Wednesday on an item discussing health and safety in schools, they criticised the capabilities of the volunteers who sit on boards to run schools.

The meeting was talking about a report on health and safety in schools.

Auditors for the council found that there had been significant improvements in the way schools were running their fire policies.

But they were still concerned that some schools’ fire risk assessment may no longer be relevant as they have not been reviewed in the last three years.

Llandrillo/Cynwyd county councillor, Mabon ap Gwynfor, asked if there was a role for school governors to play in supporting their school heads when it came to monitoring health and safety and in so doing freeing up the heads to concentrate on teaching.

The chairman of the committee Cllr Barry Mellor, the councillor for Rhyl East, said: “I think the biggest problem we have with schools is the governing bodies. I think they’re very poor. I’m not saying every school.

“I went to a big training session that Denbighshire put on at Llysfasi College and two governors turned up. My view on it is they try to fill the position just by filling it not through the strengths of the people taking the role.”

And Prestatyn North county councillor, Tony Flynn, was scathing towards school governors.

He said: “There is nothing worse than a governing body where half of them never say a word. They just sit there saying nothing because they’ve got nothing to contribute. They don’t have the expertise, they don’t have financial expertise, they don’t have HR expertise. They’re just making up the numbers.”

Cllr Mellor added: “It is very time consuming and to get professional people in there, they just don’t have the time.”

Cllr ap Gwynfor said: “We seem to be discussing governors rather than the paper,  a lot of governors are volunteers and they are giving up their free time and I’m uncomfortable with a discussion slagging off governors when we should be talking about health and safety in schools.”

Members of the committee noted the report and asked for a letter will be sent to school heads to advise of the need to complete risk assessments.