ABSTRACT
This is the story of governing schools. Governors have a longer (and perhaps less honourable) history than you might think. You don’t have to read this history in order to make up your own mind as to how we should exercise our oversight of schools today, but you might find it useful to know some of the background to where we find ourselves at the end of the twentieth century. The history of governing schools is the story of how ordinary people eventually got to have a say in the running of their schools. But the main conflict within education has been between politicians and ‘professionals’. This conflict has been about who should own the education system.
