The role of school governors is to provide support and challenge to the school and asking the right questions is a key part of this.
Here are a wide range of questions that governors should be asking, either in meetings or as part of a governor self-evaluation process.
Questions From My Clerking Experience
These are some of the best questions that I have heard governors ask and points I have heard them raise over the years that I have been a clerk.
Being Strategic
- Where do we want the school to go and how are we going to get there?
- How can governors monitor the school improvement plan?
- Do meeting agendas show that we are spending most time on the highest priorities of the school?
- What needs to change for pupils?
- What needs to change for staff?
- Do we have the right committees in place? Would our governing body work better with fewer or no committees?
- What difference is this idea going to make for pupils and how will we know that it works?
- Who is going to take responsibility for this change and who is going to check that it has been done?
- Is the clerk minuting action points showing the name of the person responsible and their deadline? Do we check at the next meeting that these actions have been completed?
- What baseline evidence can we see before we start using this intervention or making this change?
Approving Policies
- Do we have a policy schedule that means we review all policies as often as the law requires? Would we realise if we had not approved a policy for years?
- Is this policy dictated by the local authority or a multi-academy trust or is it written by school staff? (If governors have no power to change it they may wish to approve it quickly and move on.)
- Are we reviewing some policies too often or spending too long discussing policies that do not have much impact?
- Do we give most time to the policies that really affect the education and wellbeing of the children?
- Do we need to keep all our policies or could some be scrapped or merged together?
- Are we rubber-stamping policies without questioning their purpose?
- Are governors checking the grammar, spelling and minutiae of policies but not checking their overall impact on the children’s education?
- How do we check that policies are being implemented in school and are having the desired impact?
Looking At Data
- Which groups are doing well and which are struggling – boys versus girls, SEND pupils, pupil premium, ethnic minorities? How are we closing any gaps?
- What are the strength and weaknesses of the school?
- How often do we look at data on: attendance/exclusions, attainment and progress, staffing and class sizes, income and expenditure, trends in safeguarding data or accident reports, staff absence figures, satisfaction of pupils, staff and parents from feedback surveys and complaints.
- How do our results compare with similar schools locally or nationally?
- Is there are a class or a year group that is “stuck” and not making progress? How can we address that?
- How do we know that this information is robust and accurate?
- Can we triangulate data with a second source? What about the view of an external adviser? Or evidence from governors’ school visits?
Finance And Budgets
- Why has spending on this item increased and how can we justify it?
- Do governors ever say no to proposed spending? Why not?
- How does our school compare to similar schools in terms of percentage of the budget spend on staffing, or training, or photocopying, or IT?
- Can we use a benchmarking report to see how much local schools are spending compared to us and where we can make savings?
- How much does the school get in pupil or sports premium and how do we know it is being spent wisely?
Offering Support
- Do subject leaders have all the resources they need to work effectively?
- How can we help teachers to improve – do they need extra training? Time? Textbooks? Computers?
- How do governors engage with staff and parents and listen to their concerns?
- Do staff worry about governor visits or find them stressful? Do they know that governors are not judging the quality of teaching?
- Does the staff governor liaise well with other staff? Do all employees know who the staff governor is?
- How is the work/life balance of staff and how do we monitor this?
- Do we congratulate staff on their achievements and thank them for their efforts? While criticisms of named staff should be in confidential minutes, congratulatory messages can be public. The clerk can minute expressions of support, eg: “Governors congratulated all staff on the excellent GCSE results this year.”
Questions from the Old Governance Handbook (2020)
On Educational Performance
- Which groups of pupils are the highest and lowest performing, and why? Do school leaders have credible plans for addressing under-performance or less than expected progress? How will we know that things are improving?
- How is the school going to raise standards for all children, including the most and least able, those with special educational needs, those receiving free school meals and those who are more broadly disadvantaged, boys and girls, those of a particular ethnicity, and any who are currently underachieving?
- Which year groups or subjects get the best and worst results and why? How does this relate to the quality of teaching across the school? What is the strategy for improving the areas of weakest performance?
- Is the school adequately engaged with the world of work and preparing their pupils for adult life, including knowing where pupils go when they leave?
- How is the school ensuring that it keeps pupils safe from, and building their resilience to, the risks of extremism and radicalisation? What arrangements are in place to ensure that staff understand and are implementing the Prevent duty?
- Are senior leaders including (where appropriate) the CEO and finance director getting appropriate continuing professional development?
- Does the school have the right staff and the right development and reward arrangements? What is the school’s approach to implementation of pay reform and performance-related pay? If appropriate, is it compliant with the most up-to-date version of the school teachers’ pay and conditions document? Is the school planning to ensure it continues to have the right staff?
- Have decisions been made with reference to external evidence, for example, has the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Toolkit been used to determine pupil premium spending decisions? How will the board know if current approaches are working and how will the impact of decisions and interventions be monitored using appropriate tools such as the EEF DIY evaluation guide?
- Are teachers and support staff being used as effectively and efficiently as possible and in line with evidence and guidance?
- To what extent is this a happy school with a positive learning culture? What is the school’s record on attendance, behaviour and bullying? Are safeguarding procedures securely in place? What is being done to address any current issues, and how will we know if it is working?
- How good is the school’s wider offer to pupils? Is the school offering a good range of sports, arts and voluntary activities? Is school food healthy and popular and compliant with the School Food Standards?
- Is the school encouraging the development of healthy, active lifestyles by using the PE and sport premium for primary schools to fund additional and sustainable improvements to the provision of PE and sport?
- Is the school promoting high-quality provision in literacy and numeracy using, where appropriate, the Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium, to make a positive difference in the attainment of pupils?
- How effectively does the school listen to the views of pupils and parents?
- How effectively does the organisation listen to the views of staff, and ensure work/life balance for their workforce, and how does the organisation review and streamline unnecessary workload whilst maintaining high standards?
On Finances
- Are resources allocated in line with the organisation’s strategic priorities?
- Does the organisation have a clear budget forecast, ideally for the next three years, which identifies spending opportunities and risks and sets how these will be mitigated?
- Does the organisation have sufficient reserves to cover major changes such as re-structuring, and any risks identified in the budget forecast?
- Is the organisation making best use of its budget (eg: by integrating its curriculum planning with its financial planning and using efficiency data to inform decision making)?
- Does the organisation plan its budgets on a bottom up basis driven by curriculum planning (ie: is the school spending its money in accordance with its priorities) or is the budget set by simply making minor adjustments to last year’s budget to ensure there is a surplus?
- Are the organisation’s assets and financial resources being used efficiently?
- How can better value for money be achieved from the budget?
- Is the organisation complying with basic procurement rules and ensuring it gets the best deal available when buying goods and services in order to reinvest savings into teaching and learning priorities?
- Is the organisation taking advantage of opportunities to collaborate with other schools to generate efficiencies through pooling funding where permitted, purchasing services jointly and sharing staff, functions, facilities and technology across sites?
Twenty Questions Governing Bodies Should Ask Themselves
In 2015 the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Education Governance and Leadership, together with the National Governance Association, published a list of 20 questions that governing bodies can use to self-evaluate and reflect on how they can make more of an impact on the school.
- Have we completed a skills audit which informs the governor specification we use as the basis of governor appointment and interview?
- How well do we understand our roles and responsibilities, including what it means to be strategic?
- Do we have a professional clerk who provides legal advice and oversees the governing board’s induction and development needs?
- Is the size, composition and committee structure of our governing board conducive to effective working?
- How do we make use of good practice from across the country?
- Do we carry out a regular 360° review of the chair’s performance and elect the chair each year?
- Do we engage in good succession planning so that no governor serves for longer than two terms of office and the chair is replaced at least every six years?
- Does the chair carry out an annual review of each governor’s contribution to the board’s performance?
- Does our vision look forward three to five years, and does it include what the children who have left the school will have achieved?
- Have we agreed a strategy with priorities for achieving our vision with key performance indicators against which we can regularly monitor and review the strategy?
- How effectively does our strategic planning cycle drive the governing board’s activities and agenda setting?
- How well do we listen to, understand and respond to our pupils, parents and staff?
- How do we make regular reports on the work of the governing board to our parents and local community?
- What benefit does the school draw from collaboration with other schools and other sectors, locally and nationally?
- How well do we understand the school’s performance data (including in-year progress tracking data) so we can properly hold school leaders to account?
- Do governors regularly visit the school to get to know it and monitor the implementation of the school strategy?
- How well does our policy review schedule work and how do we ensure compliance?
- Do we know how effective performance management of all staff is within the school?
- Are our financial management systems robust so we can ensure best value for money?
- How much has the school improved over the last three years, and what has the governing board’s contribution been to this?
The 20 questions are also available as a pdf file.