Five questions every governor should ask about technology
Governors don't need to be technical to provide good oversight. They just need to ask the right questions.
Technology is now a safeguarding, financial and operational issue — which makes it a governance issue. But most governing boards feel under-equipped to scrutinise it. You don't need technical knowledge; you need five good questions.
One: how do we stand against the DfE digital standards, and what's the plan for the gaps? This shows whether anyone owns the whole picture.
Two: who is responsible for filtering and monitoring, and when was it last tested? This is a direct safeguarding question inspectors may ask.
Three: are our backups tested for recovery, not just running? Plenty of schools back up faithfully and discover too late that the backup won't restore.
Four: what are we spending on technology, and when did we last review it? A simple question that often uncovers duplication and overspend.
Five: if we lost access to our systems tomorrow, what's our plan? Ransomware and outages happen; a basic answer should exist. Asking these five, and recording the answers, is good governance — and it quietly drives the school to get the fundamentals right.
Executive-level expertise without executive-level overhead.
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