Guides for trustees, directors and board staff, with the statutory detail and references set out so readers can check the governing law themselves.

Guides

• Policy, Procedure and Plan: A Guide for Boards and Trustees: who is responsible for each instrument in law, the plans every board must keep, checklists for each, and common governance risks.

Directories

• Ontario School Boards Directory: Ontario’s publicly funded district school boards.

Official sources

Training and reference material published by the Ontario Education Services Corporation (OESC), the trustee associations and the province. These are listed so readers can go to the original material; School Board Research did not produce them and does not endorse them.

• Good Governance for School Boards (OESC): the 21-module trustee professional development program. Six modules (5, 8, 9, 13, 17 and 19) were required in 2025 as Essential Governance 2025.
• Essential Governance 2025 webinar recordings (OESC): four sessions recorded in May 2025, with automatically generated captions only.
• Good Governance: A Guide for Trustees, School Boards, Directors of Education, and Communities, 2022–2026 (OPSBA and OESC, PDF).
• Education Act (e-Laws): the board’s duties are set out in s. 169.1 and each trustee’s in s. 218.1.

Our analysis of the 2025 required program is in Trustee Training and the Governance Gap.

Looking for material written for families? See Parent Resources.