A government-commissioned report has called for more people from the business world to volunteer as school governors.
The Governing our Schools paper, published by Business in the Community, said employers should give more support to staff who wanted to become governors, and give greater recognition to the skills the job taught.
Redlands Primary School in Tower Hamlets, east London, has had a number of governors from the business community in recent years.
Head teacher Ann O'Reilly said they had contributed a lot to the way the school was run - and made governors' meetings considerably shorter and more focused.
"I see a number of benefits arising from the involvement of people who come at things from a 'corporate' angle - from having the benefit of individuals who are not afraid to challenge and ask questions, to those who can offer practical advice on drafting policies or approaching problems outside the remit of our teaching expertise, to helping our children to think about what some of the options for them in life might be," she said.
"Giving our children aspirations is something we are increasingly trying to focus on - and it can be easier to do that with real life examples.
"On a practical level, I think it is probably fair to say that our governing body meetings are now somewhat shorter than they used to be, and we don't have the same tendency to get bogged down in unnecessary or irrelevant discussions."
Deborah Dalgleish, the head of UK trainee recruitment at law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, is chairman of the governors at Redlands, and said the experience had taught her new skills.
"When I was first asked to be a school governor, my initial reaction was 'I don't know anything about the education system other than having gone through it myself a long time ago'," she said.
"But this is the point - you are not there as an education expert, but as a 'critical friend' who asks questions and tries to understand what the school is doing well, and where it needs to do better.
"Your perspective on matters is, by definition, going to be different - and therein lies the potential benefit.
"Explaining why things are as they are, or what the options are for doing things differently, is good discipline and makes us reassess how we are going about things - and this is what we are constantly requiring the teaching staff to do."
