School Governing Bodies

In England and Wales, all maintained schools and nursery schools are required to have a governing body charged with the responsibility for setting the overall direction of the school.

Governing bodies have between nine and twenty members, with representatives of the various stakeholders in the school: the headteacher, elected parent governors, elected teacher and non-teaching staff governors, co-opted or community governors and foundation or partnership governors.

A school governing body has significant executive functions, such as deciding the strategic direction of the school and how the school budget is spent, and determining staffing levels. It also has an important scrutiny role in acting as a ‘critical friend’ of the school, in monitoring the school’s effectiveness and requiring the headteacher and staff to report to it on the school’s performance. In turn, the governing body is answerable to parents and the wider community for the school’s overall performance. Governing bodies are statutorily required to hold annual parents’ meetings and to issue annual reports, which must contain certain types of performance indicators, based on published targets, such as National Curriculum assessment results and pupil absence rates.

There is one national school governor body, the National Governors’ Association, which was formed in 2006 from the merging of the National Association of School Governors (NASG) and the National Governors’ Council (NGC).
Statutory responsibility for the training and support for school governors lies with the local education authority, most of whom have a designated governor training coordinator. There is a national group for governor training co-ordinators, National Co-ordinators of Governor Training (NCOGS).

Useful links:
GovernorNet
National Governors Assocation