Stockport Governor Association

NGA Guide – Support and Challenge 2009-10 Edition

 
Phil Revell & Gillian Allcroft National Governors Association 2009 £12.00

You nearly always get good value from NGA and this publication is no exception. Every school governing body should have

a copy, perhaps one for each committee chair; you can be sure they will find it useful before any ticklish meeting, when head scratching over the latest problem, or before any ordinary governors meeting for that matter. It's more of a frequent reference book than a 'rattling good read' of an evening, but none the worse for that.
The major sections on Governance, Staffing, Finance, Curriculum, and Whole School Issues are spot-on and sub-headings within the sections are nearly always easy to follow. I liked the pattern within a sub-heading – the basic governing body responsibility, the possibility of delegation or not, the particular scope of 'challenge', plus supporting notes, - but the two-colour printing (palish blue headings and black print on white paper) sometimes left the eye confused and wandering. I know I would end up highlighting some of the headings for personal ease of reference and that shouldn't really be necessary.

The big question is always whether the governor who is not readily comfortable with committees, bureaucracies, legalisms and educational jargon, is really going to be helped through the governance maze. Given that failure on this criterion is manifold in national and local government publications, by contrast this NGA guide does a pretty good job. It's certainly written to the point and in good, plain English; it tries to minimise legal gobbledy gook and it focuses on the big issues. The biggest failure for me was the Whole School section where the order of topics seemed haphazard. I longed for an alphabetical subject order and a final overall index for the whole Guide, but, even in this section ,the content was excellent.

If this is the general standard of NGA Guides, then governors should think of investing in the other four in the series – Welcome to Governance, The Chair's Handbook, Welcome to Clerking, Governors- Who they are- and What they do. A copy of Support and Challenge would be a good start.