Governors for Schools
Who we are
Governors for Schools has been serving the sector for 25 years. In the last 12 months we supported over 2,000 people into the role of governor or trustee, working with schools and trusts to find people who bring the skills, experience and breadth of perspective they need to their governing boards.
A strong governing board ensures robust debate, which in turn leads to better educational outcomes for children. Our volunteers come from a variety of sources, including our partner organisations who share information about our vacancies with their staff. Through recruiting in this way we are diversifying boards, often finding people who are younger and more ethnically diverse than the usual governance volunteer. In the last year 38% of our appointed volunteers were under the age of 35, and 35% were from the global majority.
Governors for Schools offers a number of different services to help you find the right person for your role. All appointed volunteers are given 12 months access to GovernorHub Knowledge to support them in their role. We also run a series of webinars over the year which are free to access for anyone in the sector.
What we do
We offer recruitment support for all board level vacancies.
Our bespoke trustee recruitment service finds people to fulfil the role of trustee or member. We work closely with you to ensure we understand your unique requirements to ensure we identify volunteers who will make a tangible difference. Our search considers the skills, experience and diversity of perspective you need, alongside the commitment needed and the trust’s plans for the future.
Everyone who is recruited through our service is given access to our First 100 days as a Trustee eLearning, an extensive course that we have developed with CST to work alongside other training and induction support that you provide.
We recognise that finding someone with the skills and experience to chair a board can be difficult, and that sometimes the best intentions of succession planning are not realised. Our Chair Recruitment Service finds volunteers who are ready to take up the role, with suitable experience commensurate with the position.
As well as access to our own eLearning, ongoing support for the volunteer is provided through our partnership with iGovS. This includes webinars and 121 mentoring for those new to the role.
Our free-to-access matching service will connect you with people who are interested in the role of school governor. Register your vacancy and we’ll search our database of waiting volunteers who meet your board requirements.
When finding a school governor is a challenge, our enhanced recruitment service will support you with search and head-hunting to find the right person for your role. Each volunteer is carefully screened for suitability, ensuring they have the skills and experience you need.
Our Becoming an Effective New Governor eLearning supports those on local boards. We’re happy to work with trusts to adapt the academy version to make it relevant to your scheme of delegation, ensuring an eLearning that supports your own training and induction offer.
How we help
Our charity values are Excellence, Integrity, Collaboration and Pioneering. We aim to demonstrate these values in our work with other organisations across the sector.
It is our mission to open-up governor and trustee vacancies to those who may not otherwise know about the role. We know that often those outside of education believe they will lack the skills and experience that is needed. To support those people we have secured funding to run a number of Pathway to Governance programmes, aimed at younger volunteers and providing them with training and experience of a mock board meeting before they take up the role.
We have produced a number of eLearning modules, and ones which may be of particular interest are "An Introduction to School Governance” which explains the role of School Governor, and "Becoming a Trustee”. We encourage all of those we recruit to complete these before taking up the role.
Over the course of the year, we run 6 training webinars which are freely available to the sector – our back catalogue of webinars can be accessed here. We also produce and co-author a number of blogs and podcasts which we share widely. All of our free-to-access training and support can be found here.
