ABSTRACT
The ideal governor is one whose actions and decisions are encased through a business ontology, namely someone who is competent at re-instantiating the logics and requirements of new public management (NPM), including the necessary rituals of verification, to help make schools intelligible to others as businesses. The technisation of school governance can be traced to key changes in the structure and norms of governing. Strong governance is rationalised through a strict focus on strategic planning, systems of self-monitoring, standardisation of tasks and problem solving guided by the explicitness and transparency of metrics-based assessment. Risk-based or modernised school governance is specifically engineered to support the new legal and financial responsibilities of school autonomy, the requirements of site-based management and the adoption of NPM techniques. The shift from a stakeholder model of school governance to a risk-based, modernised model of school governance is largely a response to the growing demands for strong governance required as a condition of school autonomy.
