This case study accompanies the ETF Governance White Paper and draws on a discussion with Susanne following the appointment of Nescot's five new governors. As the governors are newly appointed, it focuses on the recruitment challenge and the quality of the process, rather than claiming impact that has not yet had time to emerge. It is intended to prompt discussion, not prescribe a single answer.
The case illustrates a practical governance challenge: how a board broadens its candidate pool and becomes more representative of the community it serves, without treating that ambition as separate from, or in tension with, recruiting on merit. It also shows what a search partner can add when several vacancies fall due at once and internal capacity is stretched.
Nescot's new Strategic Plan is built around four pillars - Profile, Product, Place and People, covering learner growth, an improved Ofsted grading, investment guided by a refreshed campus masterplan, stronger employer partnerships, technology and AI, and student experience. Delivering that agenda over the next three years, against a backdrop of demographic change, Ofsted reform, funding pressure and local devolution, was the explicit reason the Board wanted new governors who could do more than fill seats.
That translated into a precise brief rather than a general call for capability: accountancy and audit, including financial oversight and assurance; estates and infrastructure, including capital projects and strategic asset management; and FE and wider education-sector insight, including curriculum, quality, safeguarding and employer engagement. Every candidate also needed to evidence critical reasoning, constructive challenge and a genuine commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.
Nescot has previously recruited governors through a variety of routes which worked very well, but was keen to explore other ways to find the right people with the right skills for the board.
This time was different. Five vacancies opened together, driven by terms of office ending and succession needs in key committee roles, rather than anything more concerning. The scale and timing made the difference: recruiting five governors is a materially bigger undertaking than recruiting one, and the college wanted the process largely complete over the summer, in time for governors to be ready for the new academic year.
There was a second driver alongside timing. The college serves a diverse student community, and Susanne was keen that the board reflected the community it serves.
The skills the board was recruiting for were identified through robust self-review and succession planning, and each of the five vacancies carried its own challenge. Rather than treat this as simply a harder version of business as usual, the college looked for more imaginative routes in, including tapping into corporate social responsibility programmes run by local and national employers as a way of reaching people who might not otherwise think of governance as open to them.
The board brought a particular wariness of groupthink to this stage of the campaign, and a preference for diversity of thought over recruiting to a checklist of traditional characteristics. The board was very keen to ensure that they included perspectives that reflected the full range of its learners.
The campaign introduced Nescot to a noticeably wider and more varied field than its own networks had previously produced. Susanne described being surprised less by the eventual appointments than by the sheer size of the longlist: narrowing dozens of credible candidates down to a shortlist took real deliberation, with every candidate requiring genuine consideration rather than an easy elimination.
That is a different problem to have than the one the college started with. Where previous campaigns had sometimes struggled to produce enough options, this one produced more strong options than there were seats to fill, a sign that the search had reached people the college's existing networks were not going to find on their own.
The equality monitoring data is particularly striking when set against the wider governance picture. Sector evidence has repeatedly shown that college boards remain disproportionately male and white, with AoC-cited research describing college boards as 67% male and 88% white, and Department for Education data showing women making up around 43% of governors in responding general FE colleges. Against that backdrop, Nescot’s longlist tells a different story: the applicant pool was gender-balanced overall, with women and men each making up 50% of the field when non-respondents are included, and the monitoring data showed meaningful ethnic diversity, with 40% of respondents from global majority backgrounds. The figures do not remove the need for continued attention to representation, particularly where monitoring showed no declared disability or sexual orientation diversity, but they provide useful evidence that targeted search can broaden who comes forward for board roles while still meeting a demanding skills-led brief.
Nescot was careful not to present broadening the board as a trade-off against quality. Every one of the five appointments was made on the skills and experience the candidate demonstrated at interview; the additional perspectives and characteristics those candidates brought were a welcome consequence of a stronger field, not a substitute for the selection criteria. Susanne was clear that this was not a compromise on either side: the candidates who were strongest on paper and in person were also the ones who diversified the board.
This is presented candidly as work in progress rather than a solved problem. Nescot does not claim the campaign fully closed the gap between board and student body in a single cycle, and the college expects to keep returning to the question of representation in future recruitment rounds.
Asked what ETF brought that would have been difficult to replicate internally, Susanne pointed to targeted search and direct approaches into networks the college could not otherwise reach, and to the time and administrative capacity the campaign required at a point in the year, the summer break, when internal bandwidth is already limited.
Much of this sat with ETF's campaign lead, who scheduled informal ‘fireside chats’ with candidates and the Principal/ CEO Julie Kapsalis MBE ahead of interview. These conversations put candidates at ease, gave them a genuine, unbiased introduction to the college, and in several cases ran long enough to noticeably inform how candidates approached the interview itself. Susanne also highlighted how straightforward ETF made the practical side of the process, candidate packs and supporting documents included.
The quality of the match between what Nescot asked for and who was put forward was, in Susanne's account, striking. Two candidates in particular illustrated this: one with direct experience managing the entirety of a major transport estate, matching the estates and infrastructure requirement; and another combining audit, risk and governance experience with a background as a local councillor, seen as directly relevant to the principles of college governance, and a strong enough fit to be invited onto the Search & Governance committee.
That level of specificity, rather than a generic slate of ‘board-ready’ candidates, was what convinced Susanne that ETF had understood the brief rather than simply filled it.
Preparedness was another consistent theme. Almost all candidates arrived at their fireside chat and interview having engaged with Nescot's website, values and strategic plan in real depth, a standard of preparation Susanne compared favourably to candidates she had interviewed for paid roles. Only one candidate had not done this groundwork, and it was noticeable by its absence.
The management of the campaign itself, communication, responsiveness, updates on progress and the overall pace of delivery was described without reservation as excellent. That combination of professional rigour and personal care carried through into onboarding: within a short time of appointment, four of the five new governors had already engaged with induction activity, including a session with the executive leadership team.
Asked what she would say to another college considering the same service, Susanne's answer was unreserved: to go for it. Her closing reflection was less about the recruitment mechanics and more about the quality of the relationship, the extent to which ETF understood Nescot's specific needs and priorities from the outset, and how far the tailored, unhurried approach to the brief and the candidate packs went beyond what a generic search process would have delivered.
The Education Training Foundation would like to thank Susanne Wicks, Head of Governance at Nescot, for sharing her feedback and contributing to this case study. To learn more about how ETF can support your board with Governor appointments please contact Cezanne Ritchie-Hutchinson via email at cezanne.ritchie-hutchinson@etfoundation.co.uk
