Chair Designate and Governors

As the provider of choice locally, Wirral Metropolitan College have big ambitions for their future. At a time of transition, with a new Principal & CEO in place, they now seek a Chair Designate and a number of other board members to work with them in delivering a new strategy and achieving their plans for a prosperous future.

Location: The Wirral, Merseyside, North West

Applications close at: 

Chair Designate – 9 a.m. Monday 2nd October 2023

Governors – 9 a.m. Wednesday 25th October 2023

About Wirral Metropolitan College

Delivering a diverse range of provision across five campuses in Birkenhead and Bebington, Wirral Metropolitan College is an organisation that has been through some big, yet positive, changes over recent times, cementing its status as the local provider of choice for the communities it serves.

In the years ahead, we hope to be able to deliver on a new organisational strategy which will allow us to work collaboratively with partners across the region to bring this prosperity to the communities of the Wirral, whilst continuing to strive towards our own organisational vision of being an inclusive, outstanding college.

To achieve these plans and realise our ambitions, we need a passionate team of staff who are led by a dedicated senior leadership team along with support from a diverse board.

Who we are looking for

With a number of governors coming to the end of their respective terms of office and with our incumbent Chair, looking to step down in the months ahead following a term of dedicated service, we now seek to appoint a number of new individuals to our Board. Our ambition is to identify candidates who will bring a range of high-quality, professional skills, expertise and diverse perspectives to our Board. As with our current members, new governors will need to share our organisational values of success, passion, integrity, respect and opportunity whilst being prepared to commit to supporting us as we drive the growth and development of our college into the future.

We seek a Chair Designate who will understand the dynamics of our Board, and build your key relationships with our new Principal & CEO, the wider SLT and fellow Board Members.

You will have previous board experience, preferably in a leadership role such as Chair, Vice Chair or Committee Chair, and will understand and appreciate the complexities and impacts that Wirral Met and the wider FE sector has on the communities that the College serves, along with an understanding of the varied skills needs of the region. Whilst we will welcome applications from candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds, we are especially interested in those whose previous board experience has been gained in an education setting.

Along with a Chair Designate, we are now looking to engage candidates with professional expertise in the areas listed below to further enhance the support, challenge and professional discussion around our board:

• Higher education.
• Health and social care.
• Employers and Apprenticeships.
• Digital and IT.
• Audit, Risk, Compliance and Finance.
• Leaders of voluntary and community organisations.
•  Leaders of secondary education.
• Strategic leaders working within the local visitor economy.
• HR and legal experts.
• Experience working in the green technology and engineering sectors.

Through our interview process for these roles, we will also seek to identify and appoint an individual to become our future Vice Chair of the Board.

Time commitment

As highlighted, through this process we are seeking to not only identify a Chair Designate and additional governors to join our Board, but also a new Vice Chair.

The individual appointed as Vice Chair will be required to join our full board meetings along with the appropriate committee meetings and be flexible in their availability to support our new Chair and SLT when required. Those candidates who are appointed as governors will be required to join our full board meetings and will be appointed to a committee based on their own interests and area of expertise.

With the exception of the Chair, Board Members are required to attend no more than ten meetings per year inclusive of Board and Committees. We have additional away days twice per year which provide an opportunity for deeper discussions with SLT on strategy, direction and relationship building.

Whilst it can be difficult to quantify the number of hours that will need to be dedicated to the role of Chair Designate, due to the monthly fluctuations associated with the role, we anticipate this could be more than 20 hours per month.

For governor roles on our Board, we believe you need to dedicate no more than 10 hours per month to the role. For the candidate appointed as Vice Chair, this will be slightly more where the need arises.

Peridot Partners and Wirral Metropolitan College are, together, committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and our client expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. The successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced DBS check and satisfactory references before any final offer can be made.

Please click 'Apply on website’ to be redirected to the Peridot Partners website, where you can find full details of the candidate profile and register your interest to apply.

Applications for this role close at:

Chair Designate – 9 a.m. Monday 2nd October 2023

Governors – 9 a.m. Wednesday 25th October 2023