ABSTRACT
Those who become school governors must sometimes wonder why they volunteered! Perhaps they had a child already in the school, an interest in education in general or maybe they were invited to join the governing body because they possess skills that the other governors thought would be useful. Whatever the reason, we hope that above all school governors want to make a difference-to make their schools better. We believe that it is no accident that first on the list of governors’ responsibilities in School Governors: A Guide to the Law is ‘deciding (with the head and the local education authority (LEA) if appropriate) the aims and policies of the school and how the standards of education can be improved’ (DfEE 1997a:15, our italics). School improvement, however, is about more than simply getting better examination results, important though that is, and, in any case, it may not be easy at first sight to see how governors can contribute to the raising of standards when they are not actually teaching the pupils.
