School governor interview

[abczyx]

I am going to be interviewing soon for a school governor position at a local primary school and I wonder if anyone can offer me some guidance on what might be asked, and in turn, what I should be asking the school? I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who has gone through this process before. Thank you.

I haven’t interviewed like this but I do work with governors - I would make sure you are familiar with the role of a governor (there are useful documents on the gov.uk site as well as on the National Governance Association) and think about what skills you have that you could bring to the board of governors e.g. financial/business/safeguarding etc as some boards are looking to fill specific gaps they might have identified. Good luck!

We have a very informal chat process rather than an interview. I presume it’s a co-opted governor role, rather than parent or staff governor. If co-opted, they’ll need to know what relevant skills you have (even if it’s just to demonstrate you’ll be able to keep on top of all the reading/training etc, but anything with relevant specialist knowledge like finance/safeguarding/health and safety/Human Resources/education would be particularly useful). They’ll probably also want to know what you think about the current ethos of the school.

If they’ve had a few people applying at the same time, they may just keep a few people on a short list for the next vacancy to come up as there’s always some turn over due to the time commitment required.

Thank you for your helpful responses and I am sorry for accidentally posting multiple times.

I replied in your other thread abc

They might ask about what the role of a governor is. To be sure you are clear that it’s strategic rather than operational.

It is all about what you can bring to the governing board in the way of experience if it is a co-opted role. Your experience could be about you knowing the local area and having local contacts or it could be that you are a solicitor and therefore bring a skill set in terms of attention to detail etc. Have the school given you any kind of information about what they are looking for ?
If they haven't then what you need to get across to them is that you recognise that the position is voluntary and that it is about making strategic decisions and not operational decisions. You need to be asking some questions as well. The first has got to be what they expect from you in terms of commitment to meetings etc, so how many meetings, when do they tend to be and how often would they expect you to be in the school for a monitoring visit. You do need to recognise that there tends to be a lot of papers to read before each meeting. For me, as a chair of governors, I want to hear and recognise that you have read the documents for each meeting and that you are happy to ask questions. There is no such thing as a daft question in my opinion.