Governor school visits: your how-to guide

Find out what to do before, during and after your school visits, including if you're doing a remote visit. Be clear on what's expected of you with our dos and don’ts, and use our example questions and template reports to take notes on your monitoring visits and learning walks.

Last reviewed on 2 August 2023
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School types: All · School phases: All
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Contents
  1. Steps to take before the visit 
  2. Use our visit templates 
  3. Questions to ask
  4. Dos and don'ts during the visit
  5. Reporting back to the board

Click here if you're a trustee in a multi-academy trust (MAT)

Be clear on how visits work in your trust

Whether you go on individual school visits or not really depends on how your trust works.

It might be that your trust expects:

  • Trustees to visit schools in your trust a certain number of times a year
  • Local governors on LGBs to carry out school visits and report back to the board of trustees

What’s important here is that someone is going on school visits - make sure you know if this is you!

Even if your board doesn’t expect you to go on school visits regularly, it’s still useful to understand how they work, just in case you need to go on one.

 

Steps to take before the visit 

Do this before a time is agreed, even if the headteacher will not be involved in the visit. Make sure they're aware, as a matter