Best Practice

A guide to effective governance: Duties, processes and structures

Governance and management Senior leadership School improvement Accountability
What does effective governance look like and how can governors work successfully to challenge and support their headteachers? In part one of this three-part series, Matt Bromley sets out some principles for effective governance processes and structures in schools
Image: Adobe Stock

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:

Register now, read forever

Thank you for visiting SecEd and reading some of our content for professionals in secondary education. Register now for free to get unlimited access to all content.

What's included:

  • Unlimited access to news, best practice articles and podcast

  • New content and e-bulletins delivered straight to your inbox every Monday and Thursday

Register

Already have an account? Sign in here