This morning on the TODAY PROGRAMME, (Radio 4) it was announced that Micheal Gove, Secretary of State for Education, had made a speech yesterday regarding the need for faster reform in the area of school governance.

To read his speech, TAKE THIS LINK HERE. About a third of the way down the page you will see a section entitled “The need for better governance”. In this section, he suggests with some authority, that we all know what good and bad governing bodies look like. But actually, I don’t think we do and certainly I disagree with some of his suggestions. More importantly, where is the evidence upon which he bases his ideal? I could not find anything on optimum size, for example (Gove says they should be small. How does he know?).

There may well be a case for reform of school governance, but reform for reforms sake, without basing new models on sound evidence is not the way forward. In my search for evidence regarding Gove’s ideal, I have come across some useful documents which I thought I would share with you (and perhaps Gove might wish to take a look too).

Here is one from the Ofsted website called SCHOOL GOVERNANCE, which is a collection of case studies. You can either download the full report or the summary. It makes for interesting reading and there are some useful ideas to consider. Here is one from the National Foundation of Education Research called GOVERNANCE MODELS IN SCHOOLS commissioned by the Local Government Group and published in April 2011. And here is a SCHOOL GOVERNANCE STUDY from the University of Bath, although it is a little out of date – 2008 – it provides a thorough look and comes to similar conclusions as the preceding report. Here is another from Warwick University and the CfBT Trust called TOWARDS A NEW GOVERNANCE OF SCHOOLS IN THE REMAKING OF CIVIL SOCIETY from 2009.

If you know of, or come across any others, please let us know in the comments field below.