With the increasing strategic and financial responsibilities schools are taking on board, the need for a governing body with a wide range of relevant skills is becoming essential.

The school is in the business of creating top class education for its pupils as well as, increasingly, managing its multi-million pound budget as efficiently as a traditional business.

It is a difficult line to tread, you wouldn’t necessarily run a business of equivalent size with a group of people that happened to be the only ones who volunteered, but that is, historically, how the governing bodies of our schools are created.

As schools gain more autonomy, it is essential that governors of the right calibre, with the right skills are recruited. The School Governors' One-Stop Shop (SGOSS) is an independent charity dedicated to recruiting volunteers who offer the diversity on governing bodies that is needed.