Governors

Our Governing team is made up is made up of up to two parent governors, up to 12 appointed governors and the school’s Headteacher, who is an ex-officio governor; view our current governors, including information about pecuniary and business interests.

Governing Body Documents, including the Annual Governance Statement and Governors' Register of Attendance are published on our Statutory Information and Policies page. The annual Governance Statement explains how the governing body has fulfilled its responsibilities, particularly in relation to carrying out its core functions effectively. It sets out the key issues that have been faced and addressed over the last year.

Contact our governors

To contact our governing Chairman, or to request copies of Governing Body and Committee minutes please email the school office.

What do governors do?

Schools are complex and fast-changing institutions, and it is easy for staff to get absorbed in day-to-day problems. It is important that someone can stand apart and observe the overall picture, which is where a governing body comes in.

Staff are responsible for the operational running of the school, and governors for the strategic overview; our governors are trained to keep this difference in mind at all times to avoid confusion and maintain accountability, and to keep them focused on fulfilling their essential role.

It is necessary to have a clear concept of what their role is, and the work of a governing body is usually defined as revolving around three key functions. The three core roles apply equally to academies and maintained schools; in academies, however, the responsibilities belong first to the trust, which may delegate them in part or full to the local governing body. Even where they remain with the trust, the three functions should still provide the framework within which the local governing body operates.

What are the three core functions?

The School Governance (Roles, Procedures and Allowances) (England) Regulations 2013 states that they are:

1. ensuring that the vision, ethos and strategic direction of the school are clearly defined
2. ensuring that the head teacher performs his or her responsibilities for the educational performance of the school
3. ensuring the sound, proper and effective use of the school's financial resources

The DfE's Governance Handbook (October 2020) describes them as:

1. Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction
2. Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils, and the effective and efficient performance management of staff
3. Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure its money is well spent

Effective governance is based on six key features:

• Strategic leadership that sets and champions vision, ethos and strategy
• Accountability that drives up educational standards and financial performance
• People with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity
• Structures that reinforce clearly defined roles and responsibilities
• Compliance with statutory and contractual requirements
• Evaluation to monitor and improve the quality and impact of governance
  
  

What the roles mean

The governing body should explore and establish clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction - a school should have a clear idea of where it is going and what it wants to achieve. At the centre are the educational standards of the school, identifying what subjects or skills need prioritising, while addressing the needs of particular groups of pupils. Priorities should be shaped by a vision for the school that stems from its values and ethos.

The governing body should make strategic decisions, underpinned by the agreed values and vision, while the school's staff are operational, the distinction is between deciding where to go and undertaking how to get there. For example, a governing body should agree which subjects a school teaches, but not how they are taught, whether to divert funds into buying new IT equipment, but not the make and size of the computers, what the overall priorities are in improving results or pupil behaviour, but not the appraisal objectives for an individual teacher.

Governors hold the Headteacher to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils -a school's purpose is to educate its children. While the governing body must entrust how this is done to the headteacher, it should regularly request reports from them on progress, including what is being shown by pupil assessment. If a school's children perform poorly it is the responsibility of the staff and ultimately the Headteacher, but it is also the governing body's in that it should have been monitoring and providing challenge. (What "poorly" means is not a straightforward matter of headline results in SATs or public exams, but is related to the pupils' starting points and will vary from group to group.) This role is not separate from the strategic one but is its partner. Holding the Headteacher to account consists of looking at how well strategic decisions are being implemented and what impact they are having.

Overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure that its money is well spent is vital as schools are funded by public money. The public has a right to expect that it is being spent well and not wasted. If the governing body of a maintained school does not do this, the local authority may "de-delegate" its budget and take control of the finances itself.

Particular financial expertise or professional training is not essential, but governors are required to decide how the budget will be spent, a strategic decision as resources should be allocated according to the school's priorities. In practice, this means linking the budget to the school's development plan. Governors are then responsible for looking regularly at expenditure and querying with the headteacher instances where money has not been spent as expected, and agreeing what to do if the investment has not produced the expected results.

Cases of fraud in schools are rare, but they do happen; this is more likely if governors do not exercise careful oversight. Prevention being better than cure, it is up to the governing body to ensure that sound financial practices are in place in its school, both for efficiency and fraud prevention.