The ESGA Committee met with Nicola Woolf, who leads the Essex School Partnerships Strategy, to discuss how governors' involvement in their school’s partnership improves the effectiveness of the governing body. 

“Governor involvement is really important,” said Nicola. “Many schools now have a governor who is responsible for overseeing the work of the school partnership, specifically the impact of partnership collaboration on improving outcomes for pupils.”  

Governors can make sure the partnership work is adding value by asking school leaders: What are you getting from this partnership? What are you giving to this partnership? Governors can also monitor the outcomes from the partnership work during school monitoring visits.  

“Governing bodies are definitely becoming more interested in School Partnerships,” said Stephen Chynoweth. One School Effectiveness Partner was asked by the Headteacher steering group of a School Partnership to deliver training to all 15 governing bodies within the partnership.  

But that appetite to involve governing bodies to provide strategic oversight of partnership collaboration isn’t yet consistent across all partnerships. Some governing bodies have little knowledge of their school’s partnership work, despite the strategic focus placed on partnerships at a county level for all school types.  

So “Effective communications with governing bodies about Partnership Work” will be a topic for discussion at the next Partnership Steering Group termly meeting. Each term, the four quadrant chairs and four quadrant heads of education set the direction for the quadrant meetings to facilitate the sharing of best practice in a geographical area. The group will gauge how governors are being involved currently, what’s working well, and the feedback can be brought to the School Partnerships board. 

Some examples of improving governance thanks to governance collaboration within School Partnerships include: 

• Governors observe other governor body meetings within their partnership. The governor then reports back to both boards on insights they drew from the experience for consideration.  

• Safeguarding governors in one partnership meet once a term. They share experience and knowledge and they compare how they monitor and what they look for.  

• “Even though we’re in a MAT,” one Chair of Governors said “,Ofsted asked me what other community links we have and we were able to demonstrate we are outward-facing thanks to the governance links we maintain through our School Partnership.” 

• “We appointed a governor that oversees outputs and impact of the partnership; when there is a peer review, they monitor the outputs from that peer review are followed through and are having an impact.”   

If you’re thinking of appointing a governor on your board with responsibility for monitoring and reporting on the impact of your school partnership, ESGA is driving the development of a model role description for the Summer Term.  

Not sure which School Partnership your school belongs to? The full list is maintained by Nicola on the Essex School Infolink School Effectiveness Team page. 

If you’d like to find out more about School Partnerships, come attend a virtual ESGA Coffee & Chat event where you can hear from other school governors' experiences and Nicola Woolf will be on hand to answer questions.  

If you have any questions, comments and suggestions, write in to the ESGA and help improve the effectiveness of governance in Essex. We want to hear from you.