As of 1st April, Inspiring Governance begins delivering on its’ new contract to provide governor recruitment support to state schools and academies in England.
We’re absolutely delighted to continue this vital work, having placed nearly 6,000 governors over time and over 1,250 governors this last financial year – many of them into just those schools and academy local governing bodies that need them the most.
As an independent governor recruitment service, our volunteers bring an objective eye to the support and challenge role of governor. They are diverse, young, skilled, and committed to making a difference.
From April, they will also join their governing boards with accompanying, enhanced support from the National Governance Association, including access to the Learning Link online learning modules and Welcome to Governance LIVE sessions.
The DfE’s extension of the Inspiring Governance service is particularly good news given schools and their governing boards are tackling the twin challenges of both Covid and its’ legacy. We know from our own governor visits, the impact of Covid on children’s learning has become ever more starkly apparent in the classroom and is particularly acute for younger age groups and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The extension of Inspiring Governance is also timely…governor recruitment was certainly a hot topic at our first face to face governor conference for two years on Saturday in Nottinghamshire. The recruitment challenge was still pressing in the rural areas of the county and for the most challenging schools.
For this reason, the DfE have asked us to focus more of our funding and resources on recruiting governors for those schools/ academies who have been rated ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ at their last Ofsted Inspections. As ever, we will continue to focus our efforts on increasing the number of skilled volunteers available on our platform to meet the needs of all schools and trusts across the country.
The conference theme last Saturday was ‘positivity’ which, on a bright sunny day emerging from a Covid winter, was pitch perfect. The keynote speech was rather aptly about ‘The Art of Being Brilliant’ and as we looked around the room at all the Notts governor volunteers giving up their Saturdays to develop their role we thought – yep – what a fitting and ‘brilliant’ audience governors are to hear that message!
Read more about the role of school governor here