GOVERNORS
WORKING TO IMPROVE SCHOOL LIFE EVERY DAY
The Governing Board’s aim is to work closely with the Headteacher, the Deputy, and the staff, in order to help the children at the school achieve their full potential, in a happy, caring environment.
The key elements in achieving this aim are listed below:
- Monitoring the performance and progress of all the children at the school.
- Supporting the staff to teach and care for the children.
- In discussion with the Headteacher, ensuring that the resources of the school are best utilised.
- Forward planning with the Headteacher and Deputy to ensure that the overall performance of staff, children, and hence the school, continues to improve.
To enable the Governors to achieve these objectives, the Body is made up of key groups within the school, parents, staff, the Local Authority and the community.
The Board generally meets once a term; a number of sub-committees focus on finance, staffing, buildings, health and safety and the curriculum. Individual members of the Board focus on particular subjects, ie. numeracy, literacy, ICT, etc. A pecuniary interest list is available from the clerk to Governors.
To find out more information about any particular governor, simply click on their photo and some fun facts will appear!
We welcome views from our parents and supporters, and hopefully this summary will give you a brief insight into the role of the Governing Board.
WHO ARE WE?
MR CLIFTON
MR THORNHILL
MR BATEMAN
MRS GRIFFITHS
PASTOR KISUMBA
MRS DOVEY
MRS WILLIAMS
MRS COLLINS
This enables the governing body to demonstrate its focus on its three core strategic functions: ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction; holding the head teacher to account for educational performance of the school and its pupils; overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure its money is well spent.
One of the main objectives in preparing the development plan is to align the governors’ focus on its three core strategies with the requirements of the school improvement plan, training requirements and any requirements arising from any external review or inspection.
Governors work co-operatively with the head teacher and senior management in the writing and monitoring the School’s Strategic Plan, which sets out the aims for the forthcoming 5 years, and the School Improvement Plan which sets aims for each academic year. The current SIP is based on priorities identified from data, school self-evaluation, external monitoring and Ofsted priorities. The SIP is set out with clear aims, the key tasks which will be completed in order to achieve these aims and the success criteria in order to measure outcomes. The SIP is monitored and reviewed in Full Governing Body meetings.
Each governor is linked to a member of the school’s leadership team and visits the school at least once a term as part of their monitoring of the School Improvement Plan, Safeguarding and specific projects. These are considered a valuable opportunity for governors to be able to work closely with staff members working in a variety of roles across the school. Link governors follow a cycle which sets out the monitoring activities which they will be undertaking with the staff leader. Guidance in terms of the roles and responsibilities of statutory link governors are provided to relevant governors and regular training is available in order to up-skill our team.
Examples of the impact of these visits include:
Implementation of a new structured assessment system to address the expectations of the new National Curriculum, ensure sustained progress of pupils and to positively impact on learning in Reading, Writing and Maths;
Co-operative working to prepare and introduce new policies and working practices on Special Educational Needs and Safeguarding;
Monitor the impact of the restructuring of learning support staff and the improved programme of effective interventions.
Through governor visits, termly Head Teacher reports and on-going review of the quantitative data (e.g. the School Performance Platform analysis, the annual Ofsted Dashboard and within-school data) we know how the children are performing and where there are issues that need our input to address.
We look at the school’s academic performance against annual targets and longer-term trends, and benchmark our performance against national data and local schools as well as that of similar schools. We use this information to constructively challenge the Head Teacher and other school leaders in order to ensure that any potential problems are addressed in a timely way and successes celebrated.
This ensures that throughout the year we know how we are performing against our priorities and targets.
Whole-school data regarding attainment, progress and attendance is made available to governors through termly meetings with verbal and written reports followed by question and answer sessions with the head teacher and members of the senior management team. The governors are able to benchmark their data against similar schools, the Local Authority and schools nationally to ensure the school’s standards and expectations are high and are able to be closely scrutinised.
Particular scrutiny is placed on pupil progress across all ability groups including vulnerable groups and on the effective use of the Pupil Premium.
At the Full Governing Body meeting we review anonymised data showing evidence pertaining to the quality of teaching within the school; this includes feedback from classroom observations carried out by the Head Teacher and Deputy Head Teacher, reports on the progress of specific groups of children and scrutiny of the children’s books. Overall, this allows us to track progress against our target that 100% of teaching is good or outstanding.
The Finance and Staffing Committee reviews the Head Teacher’s evidence of staff performance against targets and uses this to determine the level of pay awards, if any, for individual members of staff. It also supports the Head Teacher and Senior Leadership Team in ensuring that any underperformance of staff is quickly tackled and put right.
The Governing Body carries out the annual appraisal of the Head Teacher; the members of the Head Teacher’s Appraisal Committee are supported by an external adviser to enable a thorough appraisal to be carried out.
The appraisal process allows us to look closely at the performance of the Head Teacher, have discussions about areas of strength and weakness and set new targets against which the Head Teacher’s performance will be reviewed.
This process has been a key enabler in improving pupil achievement, teaching standards and the overall leadership within the school.
We are very mindful of our statutory duties as a Governing Body and over the course of the year we have paid particular attention to Health and Safety requirements, staff and pupil welfare and Safeguarding.
Governors review all relevant policies on a programmed basis to ensure that all guidance is current and up to date. Specific attention is paid to ensure that the school complies with the Department of Education mandatory policy list and the Local Authority recommended list.
The impact of the governors’ role in the school ensures that the budget is managed effectively and improvements are effective and continuous. Examples of the impact of this work include:
continued and improved staff and governor CPD;
reduced overall staffing costs;
increased provision for intervention teaching.
The head teacher, deputy head teacher, business manager and the Chair of Governors are trained in ‘Safer Recruitment’.
Governors are involved in the recruitment and selection of teaching staff and use the appointment process to ensure that high quality members of staff who share the school’s vision and ethos are appointed.