Governance for Good

Governance for GoodThe Board Member’s Companion for Schools and TrustsA comfortable board is not a safe board. It only feels like one.On a Wednesday evening, in an unremarkable room, a governing body or trust board meets. The papers have been read, or most of them. The head presents. Questions are asked and answered. And on the quality of what happens in that ordinary room, more depends than almost anyone in it quite realises - because two boards with the same papers and the same good people can produce completely different governance. One receives a briefing. The other does its job.Governance for Good is a companion for the people who do that job: governors and trustees, chairs and vice-chairs, MAT board members and local governing body volunteers - across every phase, from the nursery to the sixth form, in maintained schools and academy trusts alike. Most arrive in the role, as volunteers do, without ever being shown how. This book shows how.Drawing on more than two decades in and around schools - as a leader held to account by a board, and as the person boards call in to strengthen their governance and prepare for inspection - Laura Masson sets out what good governance actually requires and, just as importantly, how to do it with confidence. Not blind trust, and not micromanagement, but the harder, more valuable thing in between: holding leaders to account, on behalf of children, without running the school yourself.Fully up to date for the new landscape. The ground has moved sharply under governors’ feet, and this book meets it:• The DfE Governance Guides (2025) that replaced the old Governance Handbook - and what genuinely changed• The end of the single-word Ofsted judgement and the move to report cards, with safeguarding judged separately and inclusion and staff wellbeing now squarely in scope• The Academy Trust Handbook, conflicts of interest, cyber security, and the sharpened expectations on trust boards• Safeguarding and KCSIE as the duty no board can delegateInside the book:• The three core functions of governance, and the culture of the room that makes or breaks them• The art of the good question - challenge without wounding, rigour without interference• Reading the data you’re given, and finding who the reassuring average conceals• Governing the things that don’t fit a dashboard: curriculum, culture, and the early years• The non-negotiables - safeguarding, SEND and inclusion, finance and risk, and the wellbeing of staff• Inspection in the new framework, and why 'inspections are won between visits'• When practice has drifted, when leadership needs to change, and when to escalate• The board the sector deserves - and how yours becomes itEvery chapter ends with 'Questions for Your Board' - a ready-made tool for self-evaluation, induction and the kind of honest conversation that turns a comfortable board into a formidable one. Clear, current, and quietly bracing, this is governance made confident: for the volunteer who wants to do this genuinely important work, and do it well.Governance for Good is the sixth book in Laura Masson’s series Advice from the Frontline of Education.