Emma Knights | Schools Week

Governors are the unsung heroes of the school system

Unpaid volunteers, school governors are now often giving up as many 20 full days a year to make sure children get the best chances, writes Emma Knights Governors do not volunteer for plaudits or public acclaim. For them, their reward is helping ensure that children in their community get a good education. However it is […]

Governors and trustees need to listen more. It’s that simple.

Emma Knights explores the latest thinking in school governance Like a number of binary debates in English education, the discussion on skills and stakeholders that school governance has been bogged down in for the past five years is sterile, limited and sometimes even immature. Can we please just agree that we all want skilled, competent […]

Some school leaders are taking us for fools – we need to stand up to them

The high-stakes accountability system is no excuse. Schools are funded by public money and it’s time to reclaim their moral purpose, says Emma Knights. Tight budgets and policy changes are making it tough for many in schools at the moment, whether you are a teacher, a school leader, a governor or a trustee. So, it’s […]

School governance: 3 key issues right now

Emma Knights, chief executive of the National Governors Association, outlines three big issues with school governance raised at the Festival of Education. The discussions on governance at the festival very much confirmed others across the country and in Westminster since my Schools Week column last term, but three things particularly struck me. First, how little […]

‘This revolution in governance does not include barricades’

The multi academy trust is an increasingly common form of school governance. Should governors embrace the change or make more fuss as they lose their decision-making powers? A school governance revolution, arguably as fundamental as devolving local management to schools after the Education Reform Act 1988, is going on largely unnoticed in England. The changes […]

Key questions for multi-academy trust boards

About one in five state funded schools in England is now an academy, and more than half of those are governed by one board of trustees in a multi-academy trust (MAT). The number – and proportion – of academies within a formal group is growing as governing boards realise the risks of remaining isolated, particularly […]

Federations should not be swept under the MAT

Multi-academy trusts are on everybody’s lips, but don’t dismiss the federation option In an era of increasing school autonomy and declining local authority capacity, the need for schools to work collaboratively is greater than ever. There are a variety of ways schools can do this, from loose partnerships to more formal arrangements involving shared governance […]