The National Training Programme for New Governors has been landing with a thump on the doormats of governor trainers around England.

The chunky A4 ring-binder, with nearly 200 pages of trainer notes, a 100-page workbook for new recruits, video and CD-Rom, is the first product of the Department for Education and Skills’ plans for a national training strategy for governors.

Future projects could include training for clerks, chairs of governors, whole governing body training, and self-evaluation materials. The department has announced that it will fund 1,000 training places for bursars at the National College for School Leadership.

Governor trainers are being asked to review their current induction training against the new national programme - which the department hopes will help deliver a more consistent message nationally to new governors. The scheme will be evaluated next spring.

As before, there will be no compulsion on any governor to take up any training. Many LEA governor services with well-established induction courses of their own may pick and choose which bits of the national programme complement their existing work. Office for Standards in Education inspections of local education authorities have consistently given high-quality ratings to governor training.

Michele Robbins, an independent governor trainer who formerly worked for Oxfordshire LEA, worked with the department to develop the programme. Governor and headteacher associations and church bodies offered advice and support en route, and it was piloted in five different authorities.

She said: “Governor trainers don’t have to take this on board, but we hope they will. A lot of my colleagues have said it is building on what they are doing anyway, but we have taken the best of what we know is in the country and complemented it with new materials.”

Claudia Wade, chairwoman of the National Co-ordinators of Governor Services, which represents governor trainers, said: “The programme has been devised by bringing together examples of good practice developed over many years by those responsible for governor services in LEAs.

“Time has been taken to pilot and refine the programme in consultation with those responsible for delivering support and training to governors. It provides governor trainers with an excellent toolkit for planning induction courses.”

New governors are recommended to use the 100-page workbook with trainers and other governors. Face-to-face contact is “important for motivation and support, learning from a wider range of experience, and making educational contacts in their local area”.

The training is divided into three modules, covering governors’ key roles of operating strategically, securing accountability, and acting as a “critical friend” to the headteacher. Each module should take two and a half hours. Factual presentations - either in training sessions or the workbook - are supplemented by group activities, quizzes, and dramatised scenarios contained in a supplementary CD-Rom or video. The pack also includes information and resources, including overhead transparencies, for trainers.

In a letter to governor trainers the Department for Education and Skills’ June Nisbet says: “The purpose of the programme is to enable new governors to contribute as effectively as possible as quickly as possible in supporting their schools to raise standards of educational achievement.”

Time will tell how quickly it is integrated into, or replaces, existing LEA training programmes.

The DFES has sent two copies of the “National Training Programme for New Governors” to each LEA, plus sets to diocesan boards and independent trainers working with LEAs. Additional copies are available for those committed to delivering the full programme from Trevor Gordon, School Government Team 1, DFES, Third Floor, Vincent House, Woodlands Road, Darlington.