The DfE governance guides for maintained schools and academies advise all schools to complete a governing body self-evaluation. As a result, most boards do an annual audit to highlight their strengths and development areas.
This is often done in autumn term and there are a several good tools for a governing body audit:
- National Governors Association: Governing board skills audit
- Leicester City Council: Governing body self-evaulation tool
- The Key (needs log in): Skills audit for Governors
These options are useful if:
- A small team of governors meets and discusses the responses.
- The board plans to change its composition.
- The board wants to identify very specific skills gaps.
However, a downside can be the length of time needed to complete & collate the paperwork.
Some governing boards need something that is focused and quick. Something that takes the temperature of where we are and then looks to the future. Our free governing body audit tool does just that: a short audit of strengths and areas for development.
At-a-glance: Governing body self-evaluation
Free download for your school or academy
- Download the governing body self-evaluation for maintained schools (MS Word)
- Download the governing body self-evaluation for academy schools (MS Word)
Governing body self-evaluation: Three issues to avoid
Before you start, think about what might prevent you from being successful in this task. Assuming that it does not need to be the Chair or Vice Chair who leads this, the most common barriers to successful self-evaluation are:
1. You are swamped with information
- Avoid this issue by avoiding audits with 109 questions.
2. They take ages to collate
- Avoid this issue by avoiding audits with 109 questions.
- If using our self-evaluation, use a blank copy of the form to collate responses.
3. You are still waiting for responses after the deadline
If you meet face-to-face, give out paper copies at the start of a meeting and allow the first few minutes to complete it. Collect them in there and then.
Do not let anyone leave until they have given you their audit. A hostage situation? Yes. Effective? Also yes.
If you meet online and your next in-person is not for some time, you will need to use email – but still bring it up at your online meeting. Follow these three steps.
It’s friendlier to nag before the deadline than after. Helpfully, Gmail and Outlook let you schedule email so you don’t forget.
If you still don’t get a 100% response, push ahead anyway. When you report, give a list of governors who you got responses from – this helps show the proportion of replies from parents, staff or other governors.
Draft your targets
When collating responses, group comments around emerging themes (e.g. Finance; English; Getting evidence from a wider range of sources). This will help your board members to process the outcomes and will also make it easier to plan your next steps.
Don’t worry if:
- You end up with a theme called “Miscellaneous” as some comments will not fit anywhere else.
- Comments overlap more than one theme. Choose the ‘best fit’ for each comment.
- Not all comments are strategic (they can still help us improve).
Here’s an example of this collation.
You can use your themes, plus inspection reports, pupil outcomes and external feedback (e.g. from school improvement advisors) to draft a small number of targets for the governing body.
Is “Recruit more governors?” a target?
You should aim for targets to link to the three core roles of governors. Therefore, you should be cautious about setting a target of “Recruit more governors”.
If you have a large hole in your budget, “Recruit a governor with financial expertise” might be ok (if you have this as a skills gap). However, a stronger target would be “The governing body will effectively support and challenge school leaders to return the budget to a balanced position.”
Any targets might be broken down into smaller steps. When you are ready to look as specific actions, here’s a worked example for this safeguarding target:
“We will have outstanding safeguarding knowledge and use it to effectively hold school leaders to account.”
- Our safeguarding governor will visit school at least 3 times in next year, including to meet DSL, review Single Central Record and to meet school council.
- Our governors will be invited to whole school safeguarding training (Term 1b).
- DSL will provide GB briefing on multi-agency work to tackle County Lines in our local area (Term 2a).
- When writing the safeguarding action plan, school leaders will include focused GB monitoring activity (Term 1a).
- Online Safety lead to provide GB briefing on the design and impact of our computing curriculum (Term 3b).
- DSL will meet our 3 new governors to deliver safeguarding induction (Term 1a).
You don’t have to have targets. It’s up to you and your board. If your governing body doesn’t plan to have any targets, you must still feedback the audit results to the whole board. If you do not give feedback, don’t expect governors to complete it next year (as volunteers are less likely to engage in activities if any outcomes are not shared with them).
Feedback your governing body self-evaluation to the board
You are now ready to feedback to the rest of the team on the Governing Body Self Evaluation. Include any proposed targets and listen to any feedback.
Typically, the Chair or Vice Chair leads on developing any action plans, but it could be anybody: Leadership comes in many forms.
Aim to mention it when the opportunity arises. For example “It’s really good to see governors in school more – that came up as a weakness in the audit. So it’s good to see that we’re tackling our own development areas.”
Finally, redo your governing body self-evaluation in 11 months – then you can see the progress you’ve made.
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