Chair of governors: responsibilities and powers.
The chair of governors leads the governing board, not the school. It is the distinction the role turns on, and most of the difficulties chairs run into come from it being blurred. This is a plain summary of the responsibilities, the powers the role does and does not carry, and what chair's action actually means.
The key responsibilities of a chair of governors
The chair leads the governing board so that the board can do its three core functions: set the strategic direction, hold the headteacher to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils, and oversee financial performance. The chair's job is to make the board effective at those, not to perform them personally.
In practice the role is:
- Running the business of the board. Agreeing the agenda with the clerk, chairing meetings so decisions are actually reached, and ensuring the board has the information it needs in time to use it.
- Leading the board's own effectiveness. Recruiting governors with the right skills, arranging induction and training, appraising how the board works, and managing the vice chair and committee chairs.
- Holding the relationship with the headteacher. Supportive and challenging at once, which is the hardest part of the job.
- Representing the governing board externally, to the local authority or trust, to Ofsted, and to parents when the board must speak.
- Ensuring statutory compliance, from the register of interests to the publication of required information.
What powers does a chair of governors have?
Fewer than most people assume, and this is the useful part of the answer. Governance powers belong to the board, not to the chair. A chair has one vote like any other governor, plus a casting vote where the constitution provides one. Decisions reserved to the board cannot be taken alone.
The chair also has no line-management authority over school staff. The board appoints and holds the headteacher to account; the headteacher manages everybody else. A chair who begins directing staff has stepped out of governance and into management, and it is the most common way a chair-headteacher relationship fails.
What the chair does have is agenda control, the conduct of meetings, and the power to act between meetings in defined circumstances - which is the next section.
What is chair's action, and when can it be used?
Chair's action is the power for a chair to take a decision on the board's behalf between meetings. It is narrow by design, and the test has two limbs that both have to be met: the matter is urgent, and a delay until the next meeting would be seriously detrimental to the school, a pupil, a parent or a member of staff.
Inconvenience is not urgency. Something that has been known about for three weeks and left until the day before a deadline is not urgent in the sense the regulations mean, and using chair's action for it is a governance failure rather than a shortcut.
Where it is used properly, three things follow: the decision must be within the board's own powers, it must be reported to the next meeting, and it must be recorded in the minutes as chair's action with the reason it was necessary. Some matters cannot be delegated to a chair at all, including certain decisions on the headteacher's pay and dismissal, and the budget.
Can a chair of governors suspend a headteacher?
This is the question the role is most often searched for, and the answer is a qualified yes with heavy conditions.
Suspension of a headteacher is normally a decision for the governing board, and in maintained schools the power sits with the board rather than the chair. A chair may be able to suspend using chair's action where the urgency test is met - a safeguarding allegation is the usual case - but it must be reported to the board immediately and confirmed.
Suspension is a neutral act, not a disciplinary sanction or a finding of any kind, and it should be recorded as such. In practice a chair facing this should take advice from the local authority or trust and the school's HR provider before acting, not afterwards. It is the single decision where getting the process wrong causes more damage than the underlying issue.
Chairing meetings effectively
A governing board meeting that runs on time and reaches decisions is almost entirely a function of preparation.
- Agree the agenda with the clerk, with a purpose against each item: for decision, for assurance, or for information. Items with no stated purpose expand to fill the meeting.
- Get papers out a week ahead and expect them to be read. A board that is briefed in the room cannot hold anyone to account.
- Draw the decision explicitly. "So we are agreeing X, with Y to report back in November" - said aloud, so the clerk can minute it and nobody leaves with a different understanding.
- Manage the dominant and the silent. A board where two people speak is not a board.
- Take declarations of interest at the start, and record what was done about them.
Our guides on minute taking and conflict of interest policies cover the two records that make the rest of it defensible later.
The decisions taken between meetings
Chair's action is the formal route for acting between meetings, and it is used a handful of times a year. Informal decision-making between meetings happens constantly: a question in a governors' group chat, a call with the headteacher, three governors settling something on a Sunday evening.
That is normal and largely unavoidable. The difficulty is that the minute book then records only the ratification, so the board's own record of why it decided something can be thinner than the decision deserved. When a decision is later questioned - by Ofsted, by a parent, by a tribunal - the reasoning that would defend it sits somewhere the school does not hold.
Two practical responses. Bring anything settled informally back with its reasoning rather than just its conclusion, so the minute carries the substance. And be honest about whether the place those conversations happen belongs to the school at all.
Where to read the official guidance
The DfE's Governance Handbook is the statutory starting point, and the National Governance Association publishes the most practical role descriptions and training for chairs. Your local authority or trust will have its own scheme of delegation, which is what actually determines what your board may delegate to you.
This page is a summary, not legal advice. A suspension or a staffing decision is one to take advice on before acting.
ComplyChat gives board and staff conversations a channel your organisation owns, on the record from the first message, filing into your own Microsoft 365 once your tenant is connected. We wrote this guide because the gap in section 06 is one chairs recognise immediately.
How it works · Why us · Pricing · FAQ