Subject, SIAMS and now Governor monitoring in Blippit Boards

Senior leaders know how important it is for Governors to be able to answer the question: How do you know?

Having sat through training for governors preparing for OFSTED ourselves, we wanted to help schools everywhere to support governors, as they carry out their monitoring role, in a very simple and accessible way.  So, we chose to enhance Blippit Boards by creating a free upgrade, specifically to support School Governors who can now log in to the app (once invited by the school) and contribute toward the whole school monitoring and evidence gathering journey.

We know this won’t be for every school but we feel strongly that it could go some way towards transforming the image that Governors might have as shadowy figures who are slightly removed from the school when in fact that’s far from the reality.  Governors on the whole want to be more proactive and help the school community beyond school fairs and raffles.  We hope that this new addition to Blippit Boards will help Governors to record, share and demonstrate the value of their monitoring activities whether they’re a learning walk, a monitoring visit, a remote read of a subject leader report – whatever!

It’s likely that some schools put a bit of training in place first to help Governors get started but we have already provided a simple scaffold to help Governors encapsulate their activity which you can see below.  Governor Boards will need to be written bearing in mind that teachers can see read them too.

The ambition we have is that schools will use this to encourage governors to reflect/monitor more strategically, discourage micro-management, support a positive/collaborative culture and help provide evidence for the ‘How do you know…?’ question governors have to answer during inspections.

If you’re already registered with Blippit Boards you’ll have Governor Monitoring already activated on your account.  Otherwise, if you’re new, register your school at blippitboards.com for a free trial and you’ll get to use everything free for 40 days!

Read about Blippit Boards and SIAMS