We drown new governors in context. Strategic plans. Inspection reports. Budget summaries. Safeguarding policies. Staff structures. The story of why that decision happened in 2019, why that building project stalled, why caution guides certain approaches. We think we’re helping. We think we’re onboarding. We’re not. While we’re handing over context, they’re learning something else entirely. The hidden curriculum Here’s the truth: New governors learn governance by watching gover

Some boards help you lead. Others make you doubt you can. We talk about system reform. We talk about leadership retention. We talk about school improvement. But we don’t talk enough about the governance variable. We don’t talk enough about the fact that two headteachers, in the same role, in the same system, can have completely different experiences - purely because of who’s sitting on their board. That’s not structure. That’s luck. And we’ve let luck decide too much for too

This is beige governance. And it’s time we talked about it. Beige governance never makes headlines. It doesn’t explode into scandal. It quietly sits in meeting rooms, smiles politely, and lets our children down. What does beige governance look like? It looks like trust- but it's really detachment. It looks like support - but it's really silence. It looks calm - but underneath, ambition is flatlining. No difficult questions. No challenge. No friction. And so: no progress