Download our skills audit
To help you and your board implement the Department for Education (DfE)'s competency framework for governance in your working practices, we have developed a skills audit based on the 6 key competencies of the framework.
The audit is designed to help you and your board to:
- Evaluate strengths and weaknesses with regard to different areas of the framework
- Identify development and training needs
Prioritise the parts of the framework that are particularly important in your school's context.
Not a checklist
While the audit is based on the competencies the framework has listed for all members of the governing board, it should not be used as a checklist.
Look to your local authority
Your local authority (LA) may publish its own governors' skills audit. For example:
- Gloucestershire County Council has produced a skills audit document for the governing boards of its schools that sets out essential skills for all governors and asks them to rate their level of experience or skill on a scale of 1 to 4
- Barnsley Governors Association has published 2 documents that, together, support its governing boards in carrying out a skills survey
Create your own online skills audit
You can create an online governors' skills audit that can automatically collate data for the whole governing board. This will allow you to analyse the results and identify skills gaps online.
Ask new governors to complete the skills audit when they join and their responses can be added to the existing results.
We've pointed to 2 popular services below. Please note their inclusion here does not constitute a recommendation from GovernorHub Knowledge.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey has a ‘basic’ service that allows you to create a questionnaire with up to 10 questions and distribute it to others to complete using a unique web address. You'll have to register, but it's free.
Once the questionnaire has been completed by respondents, you can log in to look at individuals’ responses and analyse all responses using charts.
Google Forms
Google Forms allows you to create a form such as a skills audit questionnaire and collect the responses in a spreadsheet for analysis.
You'll need a free Google account to use existing templates or to create your own.