Effective school governance: 1 Duties, processes and structures

This is the first in a 3-part series first published in SecEd Magazine.

The new Department for Education governance guides, which recently replaced the governance handbook, serve as the primary source of governance information. There are two versions, one for maintained schools and one for academies (DfE, 2024).

In this series, for ease and concision, I am going to focus on the governance guidance for maintained schools, but my advice applies to all settings.

Although there are no substantive amendments to either the School Governance (Roles, Procedures and Allowances) Regulations 2013 or the School Governance (Constitution) Regulations 2012, the new guides do herald some changes worth noting.

To help you get to grips with these changes, here are my top five tweaks to track:

1. The DfE has introduced “musts” and “shoulds” into the guides indicating mandatory requirements and minimum good practice respectively.
2. There is new signposting to resources for link governors who cover SEND, safeguarding, and careers.
3. There is a new requirement that the board must “assure itself that the headteacher reports to it as required” and headteacher’s reports must include information on delegated duties, advice to governors, and complying with any reasonable direction of governors.
4. There is new advice that governors do not have an automatic right to enter the school whenever they wish and that school visits should be in line with school improvement priorities and for an identified purpose linked to the board’s responsibilities such as safeguarding.
5. There’s a new section on chair’s action, which is the chair’s power to take decisions alone in emergencies.

The guide says that the core functions of the governing body include, but are not limited to, ensuring:

• That the vision, ethos and strategic direction of the school are clearly defined.
• That the headteacher performs their responsibilities for the educational performance of the school.
• The sound, proper and effective use of the school’s financial resources.

A governing body and its governors must:

• Act with integrity, objectivity and honesty and in the best interests of the school.
• Be open about the decisions they make and the actions they take and be prepared to explain these to interested parties.

The governing body also has legislative responsibility and strategic oversight for the school’s safeguarding arrangements. In practice, effective governance, says the new guide, is based on the following six elements:

1, Strategic leadership

Governors should set strategy and champion the school’s culture, vision and ethos by:

• Working with school leaders to set a clear vision, with a focus on student progress, achievement and wellbeing.
• Communicating the vision throughout the school and reviewing it regularly (in church schools, the vision and values are underpinned by the trust deed).
• Defining the values of the school, modelling these as the governing body, and ensuring these are embedded throughout the school
• Defining medium and long-term goals, including development and improvement priorities.
• Monitoring and reviewing progress against agreed strategic goals.
• Implementing processes to listen and respond to parents/carers, students, staff, local communities and, where applicable, employers.
• Initiating and leading strategic change in the best interest of children and the school, advocating the reasons and benefits to all stakeholders.
• Managing and monitoring risks including the school’s risk tolerance in line with strategic priorities and school improvement plans.
• Embedding appropriate strategies and risk management at every level of governance.
• Regularly reviewing governance effectiveness, including through external reviews of governance.
• Ensuring the wellbeing of staff and that staff workload is managed.
• Making informed decisions on whether to form, join or grow a group of schools, supported by strong due diligence and, where applicable, working with the appropriate religious body.
• Adopting a whole-school approach to safeguarding arrangements and child protection, ensuring it is central to the school’s processes.
• Preserving and developing the religious ethos of the school, where it has a religious character, by working alongside the appropriate religious body.

2, Accountability

Governors should take strategic decisions that aim to improve educational standards and financial performance by:

• Inspecting student progress, attainment and financial information and comparing these with local and national benchmarks over time.
• Monitoring and overseeing school improvement and financial health.
• Challenging school leaders when necessary and providing appropriate support.
• Implementing a transparent system for school leaders to manage performance, linked to defined strategic priorities.
• Effectively overseeing employee performance and the framework for pay and conditions of service.
• Having a regular cycle of meetings and appropriate processes to support business and financial planning, manage the school within the available resources, and ensure regularity, propriety and value for money.

3, People

Effective governance should involve people with the right skills, experience, behaviours and capacity who:

• Understand the purpose and importance of governance and the differing roles of strategic and operational leadership.
• Are committed to, understand and have time for the role.
• Are appointed through a transparent process against a clear role specification.
• Bring a diverse range of perspectives for robust decision-making
• Understand the educational setting and the cultural and religious contexts of the school and the communities it serves.
• Use active succession planning to ensure the governing body and the school has the leadership and people it needs to remain effective.

4, Governance structures

There should be clearly defined governance roles, responsibilities and accountabilities which are reinforced through:

• Appropriate governing body and committee arrangements that reflect the school’s scale and structure and enable robust oversight.
• Clear separation between the roles of strategic governance oversight and operational school leadership.
• Positive relationships that encourage a professional culture.
• Processes for appropriate communication between all levels of governance and to students, parents/carers, staff and communities, to support transparency in decision-making.
• Governance arrangements, remits and delegations that are understood by all those involved in governance, including school leaders.
• Publishing up-to-date and accessible information on governance arrangements.

5, Compliance

Governing bodies should comply with statutory and contractual requirements by ensuring awareness of its responsibilities under:

• Education and employment legislation.
• Financial regulations.
• The School Information Regulations (and other publishing requirements that may be found in conditions of grant).
• Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) statutory guidance relating to safeguarding and safer recruitment.
• Equality Act 2010 including the Public Sector Equality Duty to actively promote equality and diversity throughout the school

Further duties when it comes to compliance include:

• Ensuring they are aware of, and comply with, legal duties in religious measures and laws where applicable.
• Effective planning to ensure key duties such as inclusion and SEND duties are undertaken effectively across the school.
• Setting and monitoring of the school or school’s budget.
• Overseeing and regularly monitoring the impact of Pupil Premium and other targeted funding stream conditions.

6, Evaluation

Governors should engage in regular evaluation to monitor and improve the quality and impact of governance. In particular, they should complete regular skills audits, aligned to the school’s strategic plan, to identify skills and knowledge gaps and inform recruitment needs, training and development plans, and the induction of new governors (including training on KCSIE).

Other key evaluation duties include:

• Regularly reviewing the governing body effectiveness, how well governors work together, and governors’ performance.
• Commissioning external reviews to get an independent assessment of the governing body’s effectiveness and areas for development.
• Following legal requirements for document retention and accurately documenting evidence of the governing body and its committee’s discussions and decisions and any evaluation of the governing body’s impact.

In the second and third articles of this series, we will delve deeper into some of these elements. But first, here is some general advice for making a success of governance.

Key elements of successful governance

An effective working relationship between school leaders and their governing body is vital if a school is to thrive. School leaders need to understand the role of the governing body, and governors need to appreciate what they are and are not permitted to do.

A simple rule of thumb when demarcating roles and responsibilities is this: governors are concerned with strategy, direction and oversight; school leaders are concerned with operational leadership and management.

But school governance is an odd thing: the distinction between school leaders and governors can easily become blurred; it is not always clear where the real power lies and where support and challenge bleed into direction and command.

Some governing bodies are passive and trust their school leaders to run the school how they see fit, relying on the local authority and the inspectorate to provide the appropriate checks and balances.

Other governing bodies are more active and hold school leaders firmly to account; they scrutinise every decision and pore over the school budget and performance data with keen eyes.

My own view is this: governors are akin to a board of non-executive directors in a company – they work for the school and should be champions of it, speaking highly of the school within the local community and protecting its best interests; governors are not independent arbiters or representatives of community interests or constituents.

It is true that governing bodies exist to provide strategic direction and to be the accountable body. It is also true, therefore, that they need to be able to support and challenge school leaders’ decisions. And to do this, they need to be kept informed, and they need to understand the direction in which the school is headed. They need to know that the information with which they are supplied is honest and accurate. But governors’ challenges should not, in my view, extend to public criticisms of the school.

It is not uncommon for a chair of governors and headteacher to disagree over key decisions and for there to be a robust, often bitter, exchange of views. And this is not entirely unhealthy because a headteacher needs challenge, and if their decisions cannot be justified to a chair of governors then it is just possible that they are bad decisions. Decisions are always better when subject to scrutiny.

Equally, a headteacher should be able to question the governing body’s decisions and/or perceptions and help them see the reality of a situation on the ground. It is the headteacher, not governors, who is in school every day and has the better understanding of what works and what does not. It is the headteacher, not governors, who knows school staff best and has a daily duty of care towards them.

But disagreements between a headteacher and a chair of governors should be kept private – private from the community and private from school staff – because it is important for morale that governors and school leaders are seen to have one voice and to be working in unison.

Public disagreements or disparaging remarks by governors can be damaging not only to the school’s reputation but also to staff morale – which, in turn, could hamper performance and therefore be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is equally important that the headteacher respects the governing body and involves governors in key decision-making. It is also important that they keep the governing body informed on a regular basis.

In practice, it is vital that school leaders and governors support and respect each other and empathise with each other’s roles. School leaders should never forget that governors are unpaid volunteers who dedicate a lot of their own time to helping the school, and they do so because they genuinely care about the school and students.

Equally, governors should never forget that school leaders are paid to take difficult decisions and are appointed on the basis that they have demonstrated the capacity and ability to lead a school. Accordingly, they should be afforded the time and space required to lead the school effectively. If they are not afforded this time and space, then they cannot be held to account for the consequences of their actions or for the performance of their school.

This delicate balance is best struck through clarity of procedures and policies. Systems and structures need to be in place to make everyone’s roles clear and to ensure everyone performs those roles effectively or are appropriately challenged if they fall short of what is expected of them.

School leaders should develop good working relationships with governors, especially the chairs of the various governors’ committees through which important information can be fed, and the link governors overseeing their areas of responsibility.

Committee chairs and link governors should also act as conduits of information, reporting back to the full board, and as such they need to develop effective working relationships with their link leaders, relationships based on mutual respect and trust.

Link governors for some areas may need to make regular contact and be voracious in challenging their link leader about their decisions and actions; other link governors – secure in the improvements made by their link leader and by that person’s knowledge, skills, and experience – can step back and need only provide support when it is asked for.

Some link governors also need to cross the line from strategy to operation in order to be involved in budget-setting and decision-making. This is particularly true in the case of the Pupil Premium link governor and the SEND link governor, for example. More on this next time…

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About the author

Matt Bromley is CEO of bee. He is an education journalist, author, and advisor with twenty five years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher and academy principal, further education college vice principal, and multi-academy trust director. 

Matt is a public speaker, trainer, initial teacher training lecturer, and school improvement advisor. He remains a practising teacher, currently working in secondary, FE and HE settings. 

Matt writes for various magazines, is the author of numerous best-selling books on education, and co-hosts an award-winning podcast. 

Find out more here. Follow Matt on X @mj_bromley