Vacancies on your governing board? Our recruitment services are here to help. We source and find dedicated school governors for governing boards across England and Wales.
As a charity, we’re proud to support all types of state-funded schools and academies, including mainstream and special provisions, to find school governors for their school governing board. Our free service matches governing boards with local volunteers.
If you’re looking for a chair of governors, please visit our Chair Recruitment Service page.
Register your school governor vacancy Find a chair of governors
9/10 schools would recommend our school governor recruitment services, as demonstrated in our five-year impact report (produced alongside FTI Consulting).
We’ve also placed nearly 40,000 volunteers into school governance roles over the past 25 years. As a charity, it’s our mission to ensure schools have the people, knowledge and focus they need to flourish.
We help schools find school governors for free, however we also offer a number of optional paid services if you require an expediated, specialised, or targeted head-hunting service.
To help you decide which is right for your board, we recently recorded a webinar covering our free service, and our paid offerings: the Enhanced Recruitment Service and Chair Recruitment Service.
We partner with multi academy trusts (MATs) to strengthen governance at every level. We understand the importance of having skilled and committed leaders, and work closely with MATs to recruit governance volunteers for governing boards.
If you’re an academy trust wanting to learn how we can support your governance needs, visit our academy trust partnerships page.
As a charity working within the sector for over 25 years, and with many of our team being governance volunteers, we understand that every school/academy trust has different budgets. This is why we continue to offer our free service to support all schools in finding exceptional school governors.
Due to our non-profit status however, for many years, we have been heavily reliant on a family trust with our funding agreement coming to an end in 2026. This has required us to introduce some paid offerings including our Enhanced Recruitment Service and Chair Recruitment Service. You can find out more by reading this statement updating our services.
The below services brochure outlines all our services, including information detailing how our free and paid services operate.
Services brochure
Inclusion is at the heart of what we do. Our 25 years experience in the education governance space means we understand it’s vital that children see people of all backgrounds in board-level positions.Â
We believe that a diverse governing board is a stronger board, reflecting school communities and the wider country. You can read more about how we work with schools to improve diversity on governing boards and view our impact below.
Our CPD-certified induction course for school governors is a course ideally suited to those new to education. It offers information about key language, regulations and acronyms within the education sector so school governors can fully engage with meetings and school visits early into their role.
Each section contains real examples of actions and questions – to help them develop best practice and get the ball rolling from day one.
Volunteers who don’t live in the school’s local area can join the board through remote governance. By joining meetings remotely through video calls, they can bring their skills to schools struggling to fill vacancies and offer an outside perspective.Â
Remote governance enables schools to improve board diversity, find a particular skill set that current volunteers don’t have, and gain the experience and perspective of someone outside the community.Â
If you’re looking for school governors with a specific skillset, or are struggling to fill your role, we also offer an Enhanced Recruitment Service. This paid for offering is ideal for schools who need a more proactive approach to school governor recruitment. We achieve this through targeted headhunting. Â
Using a range of recruitment tools, we’ll engage potential candidates who may not have considered school governance before but have the necessary skills to support your board. This allows us to find the right person in your local area, by reaching a largely untapped pool of talent.
Through the success of our Chair Recruitment Service (CRS), we know this targeted approach to school governor recruitment produces great results.
Find out more about ERS How we find schools a chair of governors
Our ambition is to ensure every school in England and Wales has excellent governance. This drives improved outcomes for all children and young people. We want to help as many schools and volunteers as possible – but we can only do this with support from the schools and trusts we work with. To help us deliver the high level of service we hold ourselves to, we ask that when registering your vacancy, you agree to our terms of service and fair usage policy. In the case of all of the below, the expected timescale is within two term-time weeks.
Due to differences in the education system, we aren’t able to work with schools in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Read our terms of service and fair usage policyRegister your school vacancy below and a member of our team will be in touch regarding next steps.
Have a question that hasn't been answered? Want to explore how we can support your governing board?
Drop us an email at [email protected] and a member of our recruitment team will get back to you.
Looking to find a school governor in Wales? Find out how we work with schools in Wales, available to read in both Welsh and English.