ABSTRACT
In this book we have tried to show how governors, in a wide range of schools and in very different circumstances, have been able to contribute in real terms to improvement, and to the climate for improvement, in their schools. However different their situations, there appear to be a number of factors that are common to all of the schools in our study. All of the governing bodies organised themselves in such a way as to reflect their priorities; all of them delegated much of their work to subgroups. Those committees or working parties were often tasked with very specific roles, some of which were short-term while others were on-going. Often these groups included teachers as well as governors and helped to foster good relationships between them. In every school, the governors were very closely involved in, and very supportive of, the life and work of their schools. Inevitably the amount of time that individual governors could devote to their schools varied according to their personal circumstances but there was a high degree of commitment throughout. Allied to this commitment, and reflective of it, were the close partnerships between governors and staff in all of the schools. Another source of strength was the fact that the governors were representative of the communities that were served by their schools and felt themselves accountable to those communities. We wish, in this closing chapter, to explore some of these common strands in more detail and to highlight the benefits of effective governance.
