Leadership and governance are experienced differently depending on where you sit. Understanding how those perspectives align, and where they quietly diverge, matters more than ever as schools and trusts operate under sustained pressure.
We have spent time over the past year asking people who govern and lead schools and colleges how governance is experienced in practice.
Not in theory or in board papers, but in the everyday business of running increasingly complex organisations.
ImpactEd Group’s Beyond the Agenda research reflects the experiences of those collectively responsible for around 40,000 learners. It draws on responses from more than 500 governance and leadership stakeholders across schools, trusts and post-16 settings.
The overall picture is positive. What was heard was rarely dramatic. But alongside effective relationships and systems that broadly work, pressure is being absorbed unevenly across organisations.
Less senior figures are less confident
Those closest to delivery often compensate for stretched structures, holding things together through resilience and goodwill. When organisations rely on individuals to absorb strain, risk becomes normalised and early warning signs are dulled.
This matters because confidence is not evenly distributed. Across the dataset, confidence declines the closer a role is to day-to-day delivery. Those with governance responsibility tend to feel more confident about feasibility and sustainability. Leaders closer to delivery are less so.
The clearest illustration of this is on financial sufficiency. Asked to rate their confidence out of 10 that they have the financial resources to deliver strategic goals, trustees’ responses averaged 7.1.
Executive leaders scored the same question at 6.44. School governors scored 5.26. School leaders reported the lowest confidence of all, at 4.44. The resulting 2.66-point gap between trustees and school leaders is the largest divergence in the dataset.
Seeing the full picture
This might look like a difference of opinion, but it raises a harder question about how assurance is formed.
Boards judge confidence based on information and perspectives available to them. Leaders closer to delivery judge feasibility based on what it takes to make decisions work in real conditions.
When those judgments are not aligned, governance can look settled from one position while becoming quietly fragile from another.
This is not just about money. Similar differences appear elsewhere, including around stakeholder engagement.
In schools, governance stakeholders are consistently less confident than leaders that engagement with children, families and communities is systematic and informing decision-making.
This does not mean engagement is not happening. It means governance is less sure it is seeing the full picture. Uncertainty matters for assurance.
Alignment is about shared understanding
Leading a trust is complex and demanding, and the relationship between chief executives and boards plays a significant role in the quality of decision-making.
Emphasis on how governance is experienced in practice aligns closely with research on the National Institute of Teaching’s (NIoT) CEO programme, where governance is treated as inseparable from executive leadership rather than as a technical or compliance function.
To further build awareness and understanding of the importance of board relationships and alignment, NIoT is now building the Beyond the Agenda research and benchmarks into the next wave of the School Trust CEO Programme.
Data collection will be facilitated by The Engagement Platform (TEP). Without cost, it offers all schools, trusts and colleges the opportunity to assess leadership and governance alignment, and compare their patterns with emerging benchmarks, as we build out the national dataset.
Alignment is not about agreement on everything, but about shared understanding of pressure, trade-offs and sustainability in practice. We are both committed to this work because governance that embraces and acts on this self-reflection stands the greatest chance of being resilient in choppy waters, not just calm seas.
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