Governance

School governors are members of a school's Governing Board. In our school they have responsibility for maintaining the Catholic Ethos and raising school standards through their three key roles of setting strategic direction, ensuring accountability and acting as a 'critical friend.'  Our school governors give their time freely to the children and community of St Joseph's Catholic Primary school. They can be contacted via the school office or by using the contact form below.

Role of the Local Governing Body: the governing body of a school that is part of a Multi-Academy Trust, such as St Josephs, is different from that of a single community school.  The St Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy Trust is the accountable body and ultimate decision-making body, and it is the Trustees who decide how governance works what responsibilities are delegated to the local tier.  So, in effect, the LGB of St Joseph’s acts as a committee to the main Trust Board to provide challenge and support to our school.  In line with the Trust’s Scheme of Delegation, we are responsible for supporting school improvement and engaging with school leaders and the community to ensure that all pupils reach their full potential, regardless of background or level of ability.

What we do: the remit can be quite wide, but in a nutshell, we are responsible for:

1. Knowing, understanding, and challenging pupils’ overall progress and attainment. This means being clear about where the attainment gaps are, what provisions are in place to close those gaps and the impact of those provisions.
2. Monitoring child protection and welfare including attendance, behaviour, suspensions, and permanent exclusions.
3. Reviewing summary management accounts, the school budget and risk registers.
4. Hearing any appeals as part of the complaints process and sitting on discipline panels.
5. Involvement in activities such as Performance Appraisals and Recruitment.

How we do this:

• Local Governors are all volunteers. We meet every term at the school to review data and reports on every aspect of school life, including pupil attainment, safeguarding, staff wellbeing, parent voice, and finance and risk. We receive reports in advance and provide support and challenge to the school leadership on each of these areas, agreeing actions or interventions if necessary.
• School visits help us to understand more about the school and the reality of school life.  We all have link-roles into specific Year Groups and have termly monitoring visits, when each of us will spend time with our designated class, watching, observing, listening, and speaking with pupils and staff. We do these visits termly and will stay with our link-class as pupils move up the school so that we can build rapport with each class.
• Several of us have additional specific roles, such as Safeguarding or Chairing the Finance Committee, and we will meet with the Headteacher and sometimes the Clerk in between the LGB meetings to discuss progress and help support activities and monitoring, such as reviewing the detailed school budgets and financial planning.