Governor and trustee recruitment: interview questions to ask

Find out what questions you can ask when interviewing a prospective governor or trustee, so you can make sure you have the right people on your board.

Last reviewed on 7 March 2023
School types: AllSchool phases: AllRef: 4476
Contents
  1. Make sure you’re clear on what you’re looking for
  2. Use your candidate's application form to help you
  3. Questions to ask

Use these interview questions when appointing a new governor or trustee (for example, a co-opted governor), but remember you can’t run an interview process for staff or parent governors/trustees.

A representative from One Education helped us to write this article.

Make sure you’re clear on what you’re looking for

As part of your recruitment process, you should have an idea of the skills you’re hoping a candidate will bring to your board.

Use these ideal skills to help drive your interview questions – but, you don't need everyone on your board to possess every skill, so keep the questions fairly general and adapt them to each candidate’s competencies and experience.

Find out more about how to recruit governors and trustees with the skills you need.

Refer back to the application form your prospective governor or trustee completed to help shape the discussion (if you didn’t use an application form, you could ask