Do CBSE, ICSE, IB or Cambridge require a school to have an audit committee or independent directors?

No. None of the four boards mandates an audit committee or independent directors in the corporate sense. CBSE prescribes a School Management Committee with a defined composition; CISCE requires only a properly constituted governing body; IB and Cambridge defer board structure to local trust or company law. The corporate-governance apparatus of independent oversight, board committees and conflict-of-interest discipline sits above what any board requires.

What can schools learn from corporate governance?

Schools can adopt independent governors, a clear separation of the trust, the board and the principal, a finance-audit-and-risk committee, related-party-transaction discipline, safeguarding as board-level risk governance, an academic standards committee, transparent disclosure to parents, and annual board evaluation and succession planning. These are drawn from codes such as Cadbury (1992), the UK Corporate Governance Code, Sarbanes-Oxley (2002), King IV (2016), the G20/OECD Principles and India's SEBI listing rules.

Why is King IV relevant to school governance?

King IV (South Africa, 2016) is the only major corporate-governance code written for every kind of organisation, including non-profits and trusts, not only listed companies. Its outcomes-based, stakeholder-inclusive model and its principle of proportional application make it the most natural fit for a school trust or society.

Governance Perspective

From the Boardroom to the Classroom

School boards prescribe a compliance floor. Corporate governance has built a ceiling of practice. The distance between the two is the largest untapped source of trust, quality and longevity in education.

Boards Examined

Global Governance Codes

Boards Requiring an Audit Committee

Practices to Adopt

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By Aurobindo Saxena, Founder, RAYSolute Consultants · 18 June 2026

An instinct from a different sector

Between 2002 and 2006, I worked with the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI), the statutory body that today sits under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Corporate governance was one of the areas I worked on during those years.

Each year, our team developed a detailed questionnaire and sent it to listed companies across India. Company secretaries filled it in, attached their annual reports, and documented the governance practices they put forward for the ICSI National Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance. Our role was to build the assessment and evaluate the submissions; an independent jury decided which company won. Reading those entries, company after company, year after year, you develop an instinct for the thing that separates an institution that is merely compliant from one that is genuinely well governed. It is rarely the size of the board or the length of the report. It is whether power is checked, whether decisions are made in the open, and whether someone independent is empowered to ask the uncomfortable question.

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