Outstanding School Governance: The Stradbroke Story

Stradbroke Primary School Governors

I was recently asked to give a presentation on what "outstanding" school governance is. This gave the opportunity to tell the story of how Stradbroke Primary School in Suffolk moved from "satisfactory" to "outstanding" Ofsted categories in less than three years and the role that the Governing Body played to enable this.

Clearly the credit for such an achievement need to be give to the Head and the staff of the school.  Governors don't teach outstanding lessons but they do play a key role in setting the context and in giving the needed support and challenge to the Head.

This is a story not a blueprint and some of the presentation is clearly my own personal view as Chair of Governors throughout this time but I have shared it in the hope it might be useful to other governors and schools. The presentation also covers the current and planned Ofsted criteria for outstanding governance as well as some thoughts on academy status.

Outstanding School Governance

View more presentations from James Hargrave

Yesterday the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) published a booklet called Leading Governors: the role of the Chair of Governors in Schools and Academies which is well worth downloading. The National College has recently been given a remit to support Chairs of Governors which is in my view a positive move and a recognition that Governing Bodies are playing more important roles in all schools.

The NCSL now have a webpage for Chairs of Governors and announced two interesting initiatives, firstly a training programme for leadership development for chairs from April 2012 and secondly the appointment of "national leaders of governance" to complement the national and local leaders of education scheme that exists for Heads.