Interim executive board: appointment, membership and role

Get to grips with the process for appointing an interim executive board (IEB), understand what its role is and find out who makes up its membership.

Updated
on 1 July 2026
See updates
School types: MaintainedSchool phases: AllRef: 4249
Contents
  1. Appointment of an interim executive board
  2. Role and responsibilities of the IEB
  3. Membership of the IEB
  4. IEB examples

Note: Although this guidance refers to IEBs in maintained schools, multi-academy trusts sometimes set up IEBs in their academies where they feel improvement needs to be made.

Appointment of an interim executive board

Setting up an interim executive board (IEB) is 1 of the interventions that could be put in place when a maintained school requires improvement.

A school is eligible for intervention when it:

  • Has been judged 'requires significant improvement' or 'special measures' by Ofsted; and/or
  • Is a ‘stuck' school (it has met the coasting schools definition) and the governing board has been notified by the secretary of state that it has been identified as such
  • Has failed to comply with a warning notice

This is laid out on page 15 of the DfE's guidance on support and intervention in schools.

'Stuck' schools that have not changed their responsible body since their last inspection automatically receive mandatory targeted Regional Improvement for Standards