Actionable Advice…

Assurance Governance is both an approach to governance and a learning resource.

‘Governance’ covers any act of stewardship undertaken on behalf of a church school, such as that provided by governors in maintained schools, local governors supporting individual academies and trustees leading stand alone or multi-academy trusts.

As an approach it is simple but powerful in equipping all church schools, stand alone academies and trusts with at least one church school, with the confidence and ability to offer supportive challenge to executive leaders through effective questioning.

As a learning resource it offers (through this site), a set of easy-access and rapid-learn resources covering the effective questions that might be asked, and what assurances to look for in the answers.

It does this for four types of governor in a church school or academy context: ‘Foundation Governors or Trustees‘, ‘All Governors & Trustees‘, ‘Leaders of Governors & Trustees’ and ‘Specialist Link Governors or Trustees‘. There are multiple learning resources for each of these categories all of which follow the same format.

Flexible Learning…

Learning Resources:

Each resource consists of an Assurance Briefing on the area in question (with a choice of text, video or audio), and an Assurance Review (an editable and topic-specific document to complete by/with your employed school leaders).

The content of both the Assurance Briefing and Assurance Review are relevant to all governors or trustees in a church school or academy – not just Foundation appointments.

The resources (briefings and self-review) can be used as a development approach for an individual governor, or as a group learning exercise through the #think410 approach. Every topic has resources designed to be used in either way.

Holistic Approach…

Holistic Approach:

Being an effective governor or trustee in a church school, academy or MAT extends well beyond the explicitly ‘religious’ aspects such as RE, collective worship, chaplaincy-type-support and overall SIAMS preparation (as important as those are).

Every governor or trustee needs to be able to also give confident consideration to all aspects of school life in a way that reflects the schools embedded Christian character, serving those of all faiths and none.

The learning resources thus cover these broader aspects too for all governors & trustees, and are designed to be relevant to all involved in church school governance roles (whether designated Foundation or otherwise).