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Governance has always been important in education, but with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill becoming law and multi-academy trust-level inspections on the horizon, there will be even greater scrutiny of how effective governance is in practice.

Trusts need to demonstrate that their governance provides strategic leadership, delivers effective oversight, and holds leaders rigorously to account.

That raises an important question for trust leaders: how do you genuinely know whether governance is effective?

Moving beyond compliance

For many trusts, governance is still judged largely through compliance. Are meetings happening? Are statutory duties being fulfilled? Are the right committees in place? Those metrics are important, but they only tell part of the story.

One of the board’s key responsibilities is maintaining oversight of the effectiveness of local governance. That means understanding whether governing boards are focusing on the right priorities, asking meaningful questions and providing appropriate challenge and support to school leaders.

At Thinking Schools Academy Trust, we have spent the past few years developing the structure around how we assess and evaluate this across our schools.

Measuring whether governance is working

One of the most impactful things we introduced was a self-review process following governing board meetings at every level, from local governing boards through to the trust board of directors.

Chairs, headteachers and clerks reflect against a set of agreed KPIs. These include measures such as governor attendance and the quality of challenge provided to school leaders, the percentage of governance positions filled, completion of statutory training, the number and quality of governor visits and the proportion of governors contributing in meetings.

These reflections are then quality-assured centrally and discussed through governance oversight meetings involving governance professionals, senior education leaders and trustees.

Bringing together different perspectives, alongside a detailed understanding of each school’s priorities and challenges, has been one of the most valuable parts of the process. Boards are then RAG-rated against the framework, enabling us to identify trust-wide trends and boards that may require support.

This has had two significant benefits.

Firstly, it has helped us to identify themes across the trust and respond proactively. For example, the framework highlighted a need for additional support around strategic challenge and succession planning for chairs.

In response, we introduced targeted development opportunities, including a chair and vice chair development programme.

Secondly, it has enabled us to identify boards that would benefit from more bespoke support. With governance professionals, education leaders and trustees working together, we have been able to put targeted interventions in place and track improvements over time.

This has become even more important in the current accountability landscape. Trust boards need to be able to evidence that they understand the effectiveness of governance at every level of their organisation and demonstrate how they are supporting continuous improvement across their schools.

Making governance sustainable for volunteers

This work also highlighted the need to better support governors, many of whom are balancing demanding jobs, family responsibilities and other commitments alongside their governance roles. As a result, we adapted both our governance structures and the support available to volunteers.

For us, that has meant introducing more flexible leadership models. Some boards operate a co-chair model, where one chair focuses on supporting and challenging the headteacher and overseeing board effectiveness, while the other focuses on educational performance and school improvement priorities.

Other boards operate with a chair and two vice-chairs, allowing responsibilities such as governor recruitment, induction and development to be shared more sustainably.

Support and development are equally important. We provide tailored inductions, role-specific training and practical guidance to help governors understand their statutory responsibilities and how they can make an impact.

Rather than relying solely on generic training, we identify the specific needs of individual boards and provide targeted support around areas such as strategic questioning, special educational needs and disabilities, safeguarding and school improvement priorities.

Why pupil voice matters

Another major change was that, from the work discussed above, trustees identified a need to strengthen how pupil voice informed decision-making. This led to the creation of a trust-wide pupil council and pupil voice committee, enabling pupils to meet directly with trustees and senior leaders.

This has influenced real decisions. Most notably, pupil representatives were involved in the procurement process for a new trust-wide catering contract .

For us, that reflects what effective governance should ultimately achieve: making sure the right voices are heard, the right issues are challenged and decisions are made in the best interests of pupils.

The trusts that will be in the strongest position over the coming years will not simply be the ones with the right structures on paper.

They will be the ones that can clearly evidence how governance is working in practice, where it is making a difference and where further challenge or support may still be needed.

Kelly Denton is commercial director at Thinking Schools Academy Trust, which runs 26 schools, and a former head of governance and compliance