The Perfect (Ofsted) School Governor

Tim Bartlett, Jackie Beere

• Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781781350904
• eBook ISBN: 9781781350959
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Each of the 20, 000 schools in the UK has a governing body who are an integral part of the school's major decision making processes, the results of which directly affect our children. For this reason it is essential that governors make clear and informed decisions in order to implement the best educational framework for young people. This latest addition to the hugely successful 'Perfect Series', The Perfect (Ofted) School Governor written by a seasoned professional with 17 years' of head teacher experience, aims to be the most conclusive, easy-to-read, education jargon-busting and essential guide for teachers, governors (new and old) and school boards alike. It covers everything a governor needs to be the best that they can be, including the history of the education system in England, preparation for Ofsted inspections and their impact, leadership and governance, handling complaints, a checklist for effective governor meetings; guides to interpreting data correctly and much, much more!

Chapter 1

Strategic leadership and how governors provide it

This chapter will:

Cover what strategic leadership means and how governors can provide leadership in their schools

Describes governors’ meetings and how to get the best out of them

Offer advice about how to find out if you are achieving what you set out to achieve

Long-term leadership

The literature often refers to the governing body’s ‘strategic role’ but most of us are lost amongst the subtle differences between a strategy, a plan, a policy and a framework.

School staff will come and go but the governing body remains. It is this difference that highlights its main function. Governors take the longer strategic view: assessing where we are now as a school, agreeing on where we are going, finding out whether we are on track and what needs to be done to improve the quality of education.

The focus must always be on sustaining quality teaching, and learning what has a positive impact on pupils’ progress at the school, especially those who are at risk of underachieving.

Inspection examines the impact of all leaders, including those responsible for governance, and evaluates how efficiently and effectively the school is managed. In particular, inspection focuses on how effectively leadership and management at all levels promote improved teaching, as judged within the context of the school, and enable all pupils to overcome specific barriers to learning, for example through the effective use of the pupil premium.4

The special challenges of governing body meetings

Schools are complex and there is always a mass of interesting detail to deal with. Lots of people want the governing body’s attention so this needs to be carefully managed. Here is an example of the type of issue considered by a governing body: policy.

Policies

All organisations need policies – and education laws require schools to have policies of various kinds. In addition, other legislation, such as employment law, applies to schools. A school can decide if it wants to adopt a policy that no other school has in place. For example, federations and academy chains may decide they want additional common policies to make their partnership distinctive, such as on school uniform.

For the school year 2012/13, one academy in Nottingham had 48 current policies and the list noted that three more were needed – 51 in total. More than half, in April 2012, were overdue for updating. A figure of 51 is a typical number in most schools.

All policies need to be reviewed from time to time, so at the rate of reviewing each policy every three years, that means 17 per year or one every 11 school days. How to keep policies up to date is a key operational decision because it can take a lot of time. At the other extreme, some policies are just nodded through and take no time at all.

Policies are very important, so Chapter 2 deals with them in detail.

Effective meetings: fulfilling leadership and governance functions

All governing bodies have the responsibility for deciding how they will organise themselves. Exactly what they need to achieve will vary from school to school: the full range of functions for the governing body of a community school are summarised in the list on page 10; in independent schools (state or private) it will vary depending on the governance regime – the school may be self-standing or part of a group of schools.

Typically, the full governing body will meet five or six times per year as well as delegating functions like policy review to committees. At the start of each year, the governing body will decide the structure for the coming year. So, the governors of a self-standing school will confirm what committees it needs, who will serve on them and what their remits will be. There is not always complete freedom to choose, because a local authority or academy chain may issue guidance which should normally be followed.

The head teacher, clerk to the governors and chair of governors will decide what items will be on the agenda for governors’ meetings, taking account of all the requirements, advice, previous experience and requests. Not surprisingly, the task of keeping a meeting running to schedule is no easier in a governing body than anywhere else, and the chair has an active part to play.

Purpose of meetings

Many of us spend so much time in meetings that we sometimes forget to ask ourselves and others why, exactly, are we all here? The answer divides into two parts – hard outcomes and soft outcomes.

1. Hard outcomes are:

a. Agreements reached

b. Decisions taken

c. Solutions created

d. Appropriate facts, views and evidence for judgements learned

Every agenda item needs to have one of these outcomes: it is one of the purposes of the chair to make clear at the start of the agenda item what the planned outcome is.

2. Soft outcomes are:

a. Enhanced teamworking in order to better achieve ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Strategic leadership and how governors provide it
• Chapter 2: Good governance: the importance of self-evaluation and effective policies
• Chapter 3: Governor visits to the school
• Chapter 4: Holding the head teacher and leadership team to account
• Chapter 5: Ofsted: inspections and governors
• Chapter 6: Appointing a new head teacher
• Appendix 1: Becoming a school governor
• Appendix 2: A history of education in England and Wales
• Appendix 3: Meeting record
• Appendix 4: Meeting evaluation checklist
• Appendix 5: Twenty key questions for a school governing body to ask itself
• Appendix 6: Example lesson visit checklist: science department
• Appendix 7: Example learning walk record form
• Appendix 8: Head teacher’s report: suggested headings
• Appendix 9: Head teacher person specification
• Appendix 10: Head teacher job description
• Appendix 11: Glossary
• Endnotes
• Bibliography and further reading
• A word of thanks
• Index
• Praise
• Copyright
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