Culture and the enablers
The essential requirement for a governing body to be successful in its academic governance role is a culture within the members and the leadership team of openness, trust and respect. The following areas of development represent the key enablers of effective governor oversight of teaching and learning:
Respect
Respect for different roles in academic oversight. This enables an awareness of distinct academic governance roles, namely the governing body; academic board/senate; Vice-Chancellor or Principal; and senior management.
Reports
Reports tailored for non-academic lay readers. This enables a reporting culture that delivers documents that are meaningful, relevant, comprehensible and useful to governing bodies in undertaking their scrutiny of academic governance; proper governing body activity; and effective recording of discussions and decisions.
Effective engagement
Effective engagement with the student and staff voice. This enables effective engagement with the student voice in academic governance, particularly at governing body level; and similarly with elected staff governors.
Understanding
Understanding of academic life by lay members. This enables a deep understanding by governing bodies, especially lay or independent members – of academic life, its language and processes.
Information
Information supplied in a digestible form. This enables the provision of data and information that is clear, accurate, timely and reliable, and appropriate to the governing body's role in academic governance.
Academic expertise
Academic expertise amongst the lay membership. This enables the balancing of academic knowledge and experience with other skill sets amongst the governing body’s lay or independent membership.
Culture sits at the heart of all six enablers and this culture was present across the institutions that participated in a review exploring how governing bodies were engaging with academic assurance within their institutions. We have published a range of guidance and case studies from our research.
Reviewing Academic Governance in higher education: a framework
This Framework sets out some key factors for the consideration of academic governance effectiveness and is intended as a tool to support higher education institutions (HEIs) and Further Education Colleges (FECs) delivering higher education in their own effectiveness reviews. It draws on work by Advance HE and Committee of University Chairs (CUC).
The Framework has been developed to guide managers and governing bodies as they seek to review the effectiveness of academic governance. Members of governing bodies in all higher education providers need to have confidence in academic governance given that they now have a specific duty to provide academic assurance – an assurance that requires members to rely on the institution’s academic governance arrangements.
Review on behalf of the funding bodies
Insights Guide
We published the Insight Guide on governing body responsibility for academic governance in September 2017. This followed a review undertaken on behalf of the funding bodies HEFCE (now OfS), HEFCW and DfE NI which sought to understand and evaluate current practice and to provide support for governing body development. Universities and further education colleges in England, Northern Ireland and Wales were visited as part of our fieldwork.
Case studies
The Insight Guide includes selected cameos of institutional good practice drawn from the full set of case studies from our fieldwork, the full case studies are also available for download here
Additional information
Academic Governance for new Governors
Practical advice to support the governing body with academic assurance
Find out more about Governance