Curriculum: our position | National Governance Association

While the headteacher/CEO is responsible for ensuring effective teaching and learning on a day to day basis, the governing board has a key role in ensuring that the school/trust’s curriculum offer is broad and balanced such that pupils are well prepared for the next stage of their education and adult life. As far as possible it should meet the needs of all pupils in the school/trust whether that is an academic or vocational offer.

Those governing should also ensure that due emphasis is placed on the responsibility for providing social, moral, spiritual and cultural education that prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life. This includes the provision of personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education and relationships and sex education.

A diverse curriculum should be inclusive of the experiences and histories of under-represented groups and allow children and young people to see and be seen in the curriculum. Diversity should not be an add on to the current offer, but rather embedded and woven throughout.

While there is no requirement for academies to teach the national curriculum, trustees should be aware of what it includes and, if senior leaders are suggesting an alternative approach, question and explore why that is the case.

Collective Worship

NGA’s view is that the requirement for a daily act of Collective Worship should be abolished for schools which do not have a religious character. Worship implies belief in a particular faith - if the ‘act of worship’ is not in your faith then it is meaningless as an act of worship.