Governing Body Information and Terms of Reference
Our Governors' Vision
“To enable the Alconbury Family both adults and children to flourish.”
What is the role of School Governors?
- Promoting high standards of achievement
- Planning the school’s long-term future
- Overseeing the school’s aims, values and ethos
- Setting performance measurement indicators & targets
- Monitoring the performance of the school against those standards
How does it work?
The organisation of each governing body will be slightly different but in general:
Full governing body
The Full Governing body meetings usually happen once a term but including the committee meetings, there is often two meetings per term. They set the strategic direction of the school and have oversight of issues affecting the school as a whole.
The Governing body consists of two headteachers, five parent governors, 3 foundation governors, one staff governor, one local authority governor and a co-opted governor. Our Chair of Governors is Damion Lewis.
The Full Governing Body, along with the Head Teachers are responsible for the culture of the school including a focus on safeguarding. The Full Governing Body, delegate the detailed discussions related to specific issues to two sub-committees:
Teaching and Learning:
- ensuring the national curriculum is taught, focus on raising educational standards
- responsible for reporting results and setting targets
- oversight of all groups of children.
- ensuring the well-being of pupils including their social and moral development
- ensuring that all pupils have equal access and are achieving their full potential
- Responsible for monitoring special needs policies and procedure
Resources Committee:
- Oversight of the School finances and governance of these, including best use of resources
- Responsibility for focussing on staff well being and ensuring that Alconbury is a good employer
- Responsibility for ensuring that the school adheres to all health and safety requirements
- Ensuring that resources are used in the best interests of learning
- Ensuring that the school provides a safe environment.
Appeals Committees
- committees to deal with appeals, admissions, pupil discipline and staff dismissal
Individual Governors
Individual governors take on particular areas of responsibility:
- Safeguarding Governing – oversight of everything to do with safeguarding.
- Special Needs Governor– will take a particular interest in the operation of policies and procedures for children with Special Educational Need
- Link Governors- link with a particular year group and their teacher, as a means of understanding the school better to inform decision making and oversight.
How does it affect the school?
The keys to making this organisation work to the benefit of the school are:
Objectives- The governing body and committees must set clear goals and objectives for the school and themselves. These are focused on maximising the benefit to children through the development of the school.
- Committees and individual governors get involved by focusing their energies in particular areas, visiting the school to assess needs, identify problems, develop solutions and monitor improvements and then reporting back in order to continually develop the governing body’s objectives.
- The governing body must work as a team, with common aims and in a co-operative manner both with each other and with the management team and staff of the school. It is important to remember that the governing body is responsible for the strategic development of the school, not its day-to-day running.
Who Qualifies?
Governors serve a term of office and vacancies occur from time to time. If you are interested in becoming a Governor please enquire at the office. You do not need to have children at any school in order to become a school governor. In fact one of the keys to successful governing bodies is having a governors with a variety of backgrounds and experience.
With certain exceptions relating to individuals who have been adjudged bankrupt, disqualified as company directors or charity trustee or whose employment is prohibited, anyone who is 18 or over can become a school governor. What is most important is the desire to contribute, the willingness to learn, the ability to be part of a team and the time to do an effective job.
