PLANS to bring academics and business leaders in to help run struggling schools have won the support of governors.

Retail manager David Cryer uses his business experience as a parent governor for Uffington Primary School in South Oxfordshire.

The 55-year-old father-of-two, who works for the charity Shelter, has backed calls by Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth for Oxford dons and company directors to give their time and skills to help out.

Mr Cryer said: “I think it’s a great idea. Anyone with skills which are relevant can make a huge difference.

“On our governors we have a finance director and someone from an IT background”

He said he had signed up to be a governor “to make a difference” to the lives of pupils at his children’s school. He said: “I felt that if people like myself couldn’t use the skills that I had learned in work to help out, then schools were going to start going backwards.

“Being a governor is a completely different role to what it used to be.

Governors generally run schools now, and the workload is increasing as funding starts to disappear and schools become academies.”

The academics and business leaders as governors idea came after the meeting held at New Marston Primary School heard of the struggle some schools faced finding suitable candidates to sit on governing boards.

Mr Hudspeth told the meeting: “We’ve got a fantastic pool of talent in Oxford, so we should be getting these people to become governors in schools. Recently I was talking to someone from the university about how we can encourage people to come across and assist.”

The city’s secondary and primary schools have traditionally lagged behind the rest of the county in terms of achievement.

In 2010, seven-year-olds in Oxford city performed worst out of about 300 districts in the country in each subject at Key Stage 1.

But this year, numbers achieving expected levels in reading and writing in Oxford and the county were at a five-year high.

The drive could be particularly timely as concerns have been expressed about the increasingly onerous nature of the role of the modern school governor.

This is seen as a particular problem at schools that have become academies, where governors have greater financial responsibility.

Mr Hudspeth’s recruitment plan was backed by headteachers, academics and business leaders.

Oxford Spires Academy headteacher Sue Croft said recruiting business leaders or academics was “an idea worth exploring”.

Oxfordshire Chamber of Commerce chairman, Nigel Wild, said: “Business people tend to be fairly hard-headed and straight-thinking, and you need that kind of approach to running schools.”

Oxford University spokesman Clare Woodcock said some academics already sat on governing bodies, but did not rule out further integration.

She said: “We are always interested in exploring new ideas.”

And although Wheatley Park School governors chairman Tessa Shaw responded positively to the idea, she was concerned that extra responsibilities would put people off.

She said: “It’s a huge amount of financial responsibility to take on, people aren’t sure if they want that.”