Study shows how school governance continued through pandemic

A study from Ofsted and the National Governance Association (NGA) has shown that the business of governing schools continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the support provided to governing boards to address the challenges posed by COVID-19 has varied depending on school and area, the study found.

The research explores the views of governors and trustees in the months during lockdown. It looks at how those governing responded to COVID-19, as well as the longer-term challenges they face as all pupils return to school.

Governors and trustees said they had adopted new ways of working which included delegating decisions to governing board chairs and setting up dedicated committees for COVID-19-related issues. Online tools and apps have been pivotal in enabling the work of governance to continue. While some governors and trustees felt that online meetings had drawbacks, others said that online tools could hold benefits for the future, potentially helping to recruit from a more diverse pool of governors and trustees.

The level of support provided to governors varied from school to school, from trust to trust, and across different areas, the report shows. Governors and possibly heads in multi-academy trusts (MATs) tended to feel better supported by the trust in their decisions than schools not in a MAT, although there was much variation in which decisions were delegated to academy level. Some governors relied on informal networks of schools where support wasn’t available.

Responding to the pandemic, governors said their priorities were helping pupils catch up on missed learning and children’s mental health and well-being. Governors felt confident they would be able to monitor pupil progress and hold heads to account without exam data from September. But they warned of longer-term challenges in monitoring the progress of pupils who have fallen behind while not in school, and who weren’t already identified as being in need before schools closed.

Another priority was the inequality of access to digital technology and the varying quality of online education. The sudden introduction of remote and online learning raised concerns for several governors about equal access to online technologies and the quality of remote learning. Schools are at different stages in establishing online remote education, but governors suggested that greater oversight of the quality of that learning and pupil access was vital.

Some governors and trustees said that they were concerned about how long it would take for pupils to catch up and the long-term impact of school closure on different groups of children. Many were reconsidering their strategic plans to take the impact of school closures into account. Most governors and trustees felt that adjustments, including changes to the curriculum, would need to be made over the next academic year.