Governors

Background

300,000 School Governors make up the largest volunteer force in the country and their role has an important part to play in raising school standards. The Chair of Governors is often the governor closest to the headteacher and the senior leadership group in the school. Therefore, they have a pivotal role to play in helping the Governing Body work as a team to challenge and support the school and contribute to its strategic leadership. 

The development of a robust leadership partnership between the governing body with its Chair and the school-leadership team and the headteacher poses a challenge for many schools. Where relationships are good, governors are motivated, their strengths and individual contributions are effectively used, there is an open dialogue about strengths and weaknesses and the school is effectively challenged and supported.

Chair of Governors/Headteacher Coaching Tool

The Innovation Unit is working with Coach in a Box to develop a tailored coaching process specifically designed to:

• help Headteachers and Chair's of Governors forge a strategic partnership for the benefit of the school
• provide tools to assist in building and sustaining an effective relationship
• directly apply the learning from the coaching product on a pressing strategic issue for the school.

We are still at the diagnostic stage but it is anticipated that the product will include:

• A Personal Coach to work with both the Headteacher and the Chair of Governors over the period of one term using short but regular telephone coaching sessions to help keep their thinking and actions moving on.
• Each person will also have one session with a Specialist Coach to focus on achieving a breakthrough in their relationship.
• These coaching sessions will be built into a modular programme, specifically designed for the education system. This means that each Head or Chair will be working through structured material and challenges that lead up to and support the coaching conversations.
• The process will be designed to link to a current strategic issue within the school and the leadership partnership will apply their learning from the programme to this strategic challenge.

We issued an open invitation to schools via our Community of Interest newsletter and website (particularly those in contexts where there was a recently appointed Headteacher or Chair of Governors) to volunteer to be involved in the diagnostic stage.

We are currently working with a number of schools to develop the tool.

If you would like to keep in touch with the development of the Headteacher / Chair of Governors tool please This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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