School Boards and Their Role in Creating Public Value

School boards in England perform a vital function, operating, in common with other public sector boards, in the areas of accountability, strategic direction, values and organisational performance monitoring. But rapid and sweeping changes to the English system of education since 2010 have created challenges for governors, not only with respect to their work in the oversight of increasingly complex school structures, but also in ensuring that public value is maintained within this increasingly diverse public service. Recent policies of austerity have meant that it is more important than ever that public services offer value for the taxpayer. This paper investigates education in the context of public value and examines what role school boards play within this. It begins by exploring the concept of ‘public value’ in the public services (Moore, 1995) and moves to examine how this concept plays out within the field of education. Employing discourse analysis it examines the discourses within documentation pertaining to the role and function of school governors, and explores the extent to which their role is premised upon the creation of public value in the particular service. It concludes that school boards do indeed have an increasingly fundamental role to play in the creation and oversight of public value in the increasingly complex and autonomous system of education in England