ABSTRACT
The effectiveness of governors must be judged by whether they make any difference to the learning of the pupils. This means that governors need to be looking for pointers to the success of the teaching and the achievement of the pupils. This is not easy, because governors are not inspectors and are not usually in a position to make judgements about the teaching and learning from observation, although this is valuable. Governors are to some extent dependent upon the information which the school is prepared to make available and their ability to question the information they are given. The programme of monitoring should perform three functions:
• establish the current situation • assess progress in implementing plans or policies • provide information needed as the basis for further action
In the long run the purpose of monitoring is to discover whether the actions that governors have taken have resulted in improvements in the learning of the pupils. In planning any particular action, thought should be given to the way in which its success will be judged.
