Are we doing what we are supposed to be doing?

This ERAGB guide has been produced in response to a question from one of our members who recently asked:

“What I really want to know is ‘Are we doing what we are supposed to be doing?’’

The answer to that simple question is at the heart of this guide. We aim to show how you can analyse your many governor tasks to provide evidence of how well you are doing in fulfilling your statutory roles and meeting your collective responsibilities.
Before using the guide, there are two basic questions to be answered: -

Do we have sufficient numbers of governors playing an active role in the life of the school?
Do the Chair and other key members of the Governing Body meet regularly with the Headteacher in addition to the termly full Governing Body meetings?

It is important that the answer to both of these questions is an honest ’yes’ because if everything is left to a few governors, it is unlikely that the Governing Body as a whole will be ’doing what they’re supposed to be doing’.

The Guide

The guide is not intended to be an exhaustive document. Rather it is deliberately kept short.

It does, however, provide a simple checklist, which will enable governors to make an informed judgement, based on evidence, about how far you are fulfilling your collective roles and responsibilities. The three key roles and core tasks are identified in Part 1. Part 2 lists the key responsibilities and provides some examples of what you might be doing when you carry out these responsibilities. For further and more complex analysis, governors should refer to the (2007) Governor Mark; Quality Mark for Governance.

Obtaining the Guide

Use this PDF link to download and then print the guide. It has been designed to be printed on both sides of a single sheet of A3 paper and then folder in half, so may look odd if printed as separate pages. Taking time to consider the guide should help Governors answer our most fundamental question. . .