Last reviewed on 24 January 2022
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 4403

Be clear on your strategic role in reviewing policies and use our questions to make sure you do it properly.

Thanks to Jackie Beard, Jonathan Gower and Vicky Redding, our associate education experts, for their help writing this article.

Your role in reviewing policies

As a governing board your role is to ask challenging questions so that you can satisfy yourself that the policy is robust. In particular you want to know that the policy is:

  • Up-to-date with relevant requirements
  • Fit for purpose and tailored to your school
  • Aligned with your school's improvement strategies and ethos

Use our questions below to help you find out. 

It's not your role to:

  • Write or revise policies
  • Search for other policies to compare your current policy to
  • Seek stakeholder feedback on policies

Remember: the actual policy-making is operational and should be left to senior leaders. Don't insert yourself into the policy-making process. 

Use our questions to interrogate the policy

Invite the relevant member