Questions to support governor challenge:
What do we know?
How do we know?
How do we monitor this?
What effect has this had?
What plans do we have in place to improve this?
When will we review these?
Who is responsible for this?
Leadership
What is our vision for the school?
How do our aims, strategic objectives and plans meet the needs of our pupils? How are they monitored?
How well do you communicate these expectations to all the staff in the school?
How well is the school, and teams within the school managed? How effectively is the work of these teams monitored?
How effectively do you challenge, but also support staff through performance management to achieve their best?
What is the impact of this?
What are the arrangements for succession planning and talent spotting?
How is leadership contributing to the development of the next generation of school leaders?
Are there any issues of underperformance? How have you addressed these issues? What strategies are in place to challenge and support these members of staff?
What are our local and national priorities? How effective are we in meeting these?
Improving quality
What are the schools strengths and weaknesses?
How well do we evaluate and review all aspects of school life? How often do we observe lessons? How often do we scrutinise pupils’ work and teachers' assessment of the work?
Does the SLT work together and with others to ensure judgments are standardised?
How effectively do we take on the views of pupils? How effectively do we take on the views of parents? How effectively do we take on the views of external stakeholders e.g. LA, consortium, community members, other providers…? What effect does this have on teaching and learning, management or provision?
How often and how effectively do we review the work of departments/year groups?
As a result, what are the schools priorities for improvement? Do these arise from self-evaluation? How well is progress against priorities monitored and evaluated? Has this led to any improvements?
How well have we planned to ensure these improvements? What actions, resources and time are required to achieve these? How do we / will we monitor these?
Are all departments clear on what they need to do to improve? Who are our best performing departments / year groups which departments/ year groups are a cause for concern?
How well do our pastoral / learning co-ordinators (heads of year / learning) evaluate their work and plan to improve the provision in order to raise standards?
How does all this impact on pupils’ standards?
Partnership working
What strategic partnerships do we have?
How do we work with all these partners to plan, manage and quality assure provision?
What impact do these partnerships have on pupils’ standards and wellbeing?
Can we develop stronger relationships with partnership schools?
How well does the school engage with other schools to raise standards?
Resource management
How do we plan and monitor the management of our resources, especially staff development? Are all staff deployed in their specialist subjects? How do we support those staff that teach outside of their specialist subject?
What opportunities are there for staff to develop teaching and managerial skills? What PLC’s are staff involved in within and outside of the school? What impact do these have on standards and wellbeing?
Do we work with schools within our family on aspects to improve standards?
Are there schools in our family that have high standards in certain indicators / outcomes that we could collaborate with effectively?
What impact do these have on pupils’ standards?
How do we prioritise our spending to ensure improvements over time?
What impact does our spending of the PDG grant have on specific pupils’ performance?