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Thurleigh Primary School & Nursery

Thurleigh Primary School & Nursery

Federation Governance ​​​​​​

Working in partnership with families to unlock the potential of every individual. Together, we nurture a self-belief and a lifelong passion for learning

We are looking for parent and/or co-opted governors to join our team – if you are interested please contact chair@ktfederation.co.uk  

Governing Board Contact: chair@ktfederation.gov.uk

Governor role:
The role of a Governor is to work with other Federation Governors to plan our schools’ strategic direction in:

  • Overseeing the school’s financial performance, ensuring money is well-spent.
  • Holding the headteacher or school leadership to account.

A governor’s relationship with the school’s leadership team involves challenging existing processes to drive school improvement to support our young people’s futures. Governors offer strategic guidance rather than getting involved in the operational aspects of a school.

The role of the Governor is clearly outlined in our generic Governor Role Descriptor.

Some of our Governors also have specific ‘lead’ monitoring roles which cover certain areas in more detail. These are Safeguarding, Special Educational Needs, Health & Safety, Communications and Stakeholder Engagement, Mental Health and Wellbeing and Early Careers Teachers Lead.
We also visit the school at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms as part of our monitoring of the Schools’ Development Plan and review the progress our schools are making with their priorities for the academic year. Our Governor School Visits Policy outlines how visits to the schools operate.

What’s expected of our Governors:
Our Governors follow a Code of Conduct which sets out the Seven Nolan Principles of Public Life.
We do expect our Governors to attend training to keep up-to-date with education developments, legislation and monitoring obligations to cover the breadth of the work our schools are involved in.

Knowledge and understanding develops over time and we ensure our Governors are supported in their learning and application of that learning to the role of the Governor in supporting and challenging our senior leaders to provide the best education possible.

The Governors’ calendar:
The Full Governing Board meets once in each half term (6 times a year).
Our Finance Committee also meets once each half term and normally before the Full Governing Board meeting so that we have a timely meeting cycle that feeds into full board discussions.
Each of our committees have a term of reference which guide us to ensure we fulfil our responsibilities.
We also have a Pay & Performance Committee which meets once a year, usually toward the end of the Autumn term.

Work of Governors:
Governors through board and committee meetings will discuss, review and monitor the work of the school in a number of areas. Some of our statutory tasks are scheduled in our Annual Governance Planner which helps us to plan our agendas for the academic year.

The School Development Strategic Plan drives our monitoring work. Some of our work relates to monitoring our schools’ curriculum offer to ensure it is broad and balanced as well as stimulating and engaging for all our children.  We also ensure that money is well spent and we monitor how it is targeted towards supporting the needs of our schools.

Engaging with our stakeholders:
We use pupil voice, staff and parent feedback at every opportunity when we are evaluating the progress being made by our schools. We strongly believe that working in partnership with each stakeholder group allows us to gain a holistic picture of how our schools are performing and an insight of the impact our strategic direction and decision-making is having in our communities.

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