“If we imagine we’re small, we will think small.”

This is a mantra I come back to often at Tealby School, a village primary of 80 children where I serve as chair of governors. Because for small schools like ours, mindset is everything.

Our guiding belief is simple: the school does not end at the gate. When we start to think that it does, we limit our impact before we’ve even begun.

That’s why, for our governing board, we’ve been clear that it’s our job to keep those boundaries open - looking outward, building connections and nurturing the relationships that make us stronger.

This attitude is vital because, just like at numerous other small schools grappling with similar pressures - dwindling rolls, constrained budgets and the challenge of sustaining both quality and ambition - it’s easy to slip into survival mode. So over the past four years we’ve approached things differently.

Our key principle is that governance should be generative, not reactive. Oversight matters, but strategy is where schools find their power.

A small school with a big outlook

One way we bring this to life is through our five-year strategy. We don’t revisit it once a year just to tick a box - it shapes every decision we make.

What’s more, it was co-created with staff, families and the wider community, so it belongs to everyone. That shared ownership brings clarity and cohesion, even when resources are tight.

From this we were able to adapt our governance structure to align with our strategic goals. Too often boards assume structures are fixed - they’re not.

When we first reviewed our plan, the questions were daunting: how can we achieve this? How can we add strategic capacity to a small staff team? In what ways do our board and staffing structures limit what’s possible?

Coordinating expertise

A good example of this in action was the creation our Building and Development Group - historians, architects, business leaders and marketing professionals working together to preserve and promote the school’s heritage.

The group has since developed an estates strategy, planned building improvements and created a sustainable funding plan. The PTFA chair and school bursar join the group, which allows us to align with existing efforts and avoid duplication.

This year, after completing a standard skills audit, we are following up with a capacity mapping exercise to identify gaps in knowledge or expertise and to explore how our personal and professional networks could help to fill them.

We hope this approach can be adopted by the wider staff group to support the recruitment of volunteers in the setting.

Linked to this, we also invest intentionally in developing our governors through coaching and mentoring: it’s how we stay focused, resilient and aligned.

Training and mentoring

For this, governors take part in mid-year reviews. These triad conversations help us to understand each governor’s developing skills and the time and energy they can realistically contribute.

We value peer learning and proactively build connections between board members. All monitoring visits are done in pairs to support collaborative reflection. This year we will partner with another board in a year-long exchange to learn from each other’s practice.

Our headteacher, Zoe Humberstone, and I both value the coaching culture that runs through our staff and our board. I believe that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been able to stay strong through uncertain times: we learn together.

Together, all this means we can achieve far more than staff capacity alone would allow. This way of working is a reminder that innovation doesn’t always mean new technology or big spending. In small schools, it is often about connection.

For me, Tealby’s story is about more than our own school. It’s about what small schools can achieve when they lead with purpose and courage. We’re not defined by our size, but by our outlook.

As such, when the National Governance Association presented us with the Chief Executive’s Award for Outstanding Governance, it wasn’t recognition for being perfect. It was recognition for thinking differently and for seeing our limitations as an invitation to innovate.

The award sits proudly in the school’s lobby - proof that small schools are defined not by what they lack, but by what they make possible.

Rebecca Blackwood is chair of governors at Tealby School in Lincolnshire and trustee of the National Association of Small Schools

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