The purpose of governance is to provide confident, strategic leadership and to create robust accountability, oversight and assurance for educational and financial performance.
Governors have three core functions:
- Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;
- Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils, and the performance management of staff; and
- Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure its money is well spent.
The Governance handbook 2017 provides guidance from the Department for Education.
It sets out the government’s vision and priorities for effective governance by:
- outlining the core role and functions of the governing board;
- summarising and providing a first point of reference on all the legal duties on boards
- signposting to more detailed information, guidance and resources; and
- providing information on the support available to boards to be effective.
