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Governors

The Governing Body

The Governing Body oversees the work of our school.  We have 14 governors, including staff governors, parent governors and co-opted governors made up as follows:

  • Three parent governors who are elected by the parent body and must be the parent or carer of a child attending the school at the time of their appointment.  They should keep in touch with other parents but make up their own minds on how to vote on any specific issue.  
  • One Staff governor elected by their colleagues.
  • The Headteacher is a member of the governing body by right.
  • One Local education authority governor appointed by Kent County Council. 
  • Eight Co-opted governors appointed by the governing body based on their skills and experience.

Associate Members of the Governing Body are appointed by the Governing Body to provide specific skills which may, from time-to-time, be needed to help the governors discharge their responsibilities.

The Governing Body has many different responsibilities, but primarily it must promote high standards of academic achievement and help ensure that the school is a safe and happy place for its pupils.

It helps to do this in many different ways, including setting school budgets, ensuring the National Curriculum is taught to all pupils, setting targets for achievement, monitoring information about the quality of teaching in the school and comparing results with other schools and dealing with parental complaints and concerns and making regular monitoring visits.

It also takes a long-term, strategic look at how the school should develop, and always welcomes the opinions of and representations from, parents, staff, pupils and the local community.

The governors work is divided between meetings of the Full Governing Body (FGB), which are attended by all governors, and three committees:

  • Curriculum (C)
  • Personnel and Professional Development (P&PD)
  • Finance and Property (F&P).
  • Governor membership of these committees is shown below along with the specific responsibilities of each committee.

The governors can be contacted by email by clicking on the enquiry form link below or in writing via the school office, please address your correspondence to the Chair of Governors.  

Please note however than any questions about the day-to-day operation of the school, or any complaints, should first be directed to your child's class teacher, phase leader, or the headteacher.

Governors

Our Governors are:

Governor Type

Name / Position Held

Date

Appointed to Latest Term of Office

Appointing

Body

Term

Committee

Membership

2022/23 
Attendance

(See note below)

Local Authority

Stuart Concannon (Co-Chair Personnel & Professional Committee)

14/7/21

LA

4 years

FGB, P&PD, C

100%

Co-Opted

David Evans 

(Co-Chair of Finance and Property Committee)

29/9/21

GB

4 years

FGB, F&P, C

73%

             

Co-Opted

Viki Garrett

27/04/20

GB

4 years

FGB, F&P, C

100%

Co-Opted

Simon Griffiths
(Chair of Governors)

11/09/23

GB

4 years

FGB, F&P, P&PD, C

100%

Staff Nicola Hill 01/09/20 GB 4 years FGB, C, F&P 100%

Parent

Eleanor Hoyle (Co-Chair Curriculum Committee and Vice Chair of Governors)

18/03/21

Parents

4 years

FGB, C

73%

Parent Bérengère Mauduit 02/12/22 Parents 4 years FGB 63%

Co-Opted

Scott Miller
(Co-Chair Curriculum Committee)

28/09/22

GB

4 years

FGB, C, F&P

82%

Headteacher

Karen Slade

01/09/16

By right

Ongoing

FGB, F&P, P&PD, C

100%

Parent Daniel van Bregt (Co-Chair Finance and Property Committee) 02/12/2022 Parents 4 years FGB 75%
Co-Opted Jessica Watson-Reynolds 07/02/2024 GB 4 years - -

Co-Opted

Sahar Zaidi-Shirazee

(Co-Chair Personnel and Professional Committee) 

28/09/22

GB

4 years

FGB, C, P&PD

73%

Clerk

Sarah Rome

N/A

-

-

-

N/A

Table Key/Notes:

GB – Governing Body, LA – Local Authority.

The 'Date Appointed' is for the current term of office. Several governors have completed more than one term of office, or have been appointed by different appointing bodies during their time serving on the governing body.

Attendance figures show the percentage of meetings attended out of the total expected.  Governors are expected to attend all meetings of the Full Governing Body and two out of the three committees. Some governors have chosen to attend all committees although they are not obliged to do so.  In this case their attendance percentage is greater than 100%.

Please note attendance at meetings is not the only indicator of the time committed to the governing body.  Governors make monitoring visits to the school, write reports, review documents, attend school events, meet with school leaders and members of staff and attend regular training.

We are obliged to provide attendance figures for any governors who have stepped down during the last 12 months. These are shown below:

Governor Type

Name / Position Held

Date

Appointed (See note above)

Appointing

Body

Date Term Ended

2022/23
Attendance

(See note above)

 
Co-Opted Laura Fisher 13/07/22 GB 21/07/23 75% N/A
             

Declaration of Material, Business & Pecuniary Interests.

All governors have made a nil-return with the exception of those shown below:

Name

Details of Declaration

David Evans

 

 

Director Comet Associates Limited - IT consultancy
Director Courtyard Associates Limited - IT consultancy
Director Kensington Worcester - IT solutions Implementer

Chair of Local Governing Body Cage Green Primary School 

PACT (Phoenix Centre for Autism Tonbridge)

Partner is an Employee of Delaware LLP

Partner is Director of FISCH Social Ltd

Simon Griffiths Co-Chair of Governors Rusthall St Paul's CE Primary school


Below are more details about the responsibilities of the governing body committees.

Full Governing Body

The main responsibilities of the Full Governing Body (FGB) include:

  • Ensuring the governing body is properly constituted to include the correct number of representative governors and that the structure of the governing body meets the necessary statutory and legal requirements. 
  • Appointment of the Chair, Vice-Chair and Clerk to the Governors.
  • Appointment of the Headteacher and Deputy-Headteacher and to annually review the performance of the Headteacher.  If necessary the FGB has the power to suspend the Headteacher.
  • Approval of the first formal budget plan each year.
  • Agreeing the delegation of tasks and authority to the Headteacher and the committees described below and to review these annually.
  • Playing a vital role in agreeing strategy and future plans and reviewing reports from the committees and Headteacher which include monitoring the financial and educational performance of the school to ensure it is meeting its targets.
  • Reviewing and adopting policies covering the operation of the school or delegating the review and adoption of certain policies to the appropriate committee.
  • Regularly reviewing the School Improvement Plan to ensure the school is on track to achieve its objectives. 
  • Where necessary, agreeing any actions required where there is a concern educational or financial targets may be missed.
  • Ensuring the school does not discriminate against pupils, job applicants or staff on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, disability or sexual orientation.
  • Ensuring the school provides teaching of religious education for all pupils in accordance with the agreed syllabus and has informed parents of their right to withdraw their child.
  • To ensure that the school has a parental complaints procedure.
  • To hear staff appeals against dismissal, complaints or redundancy.
  • To approve the school prospectus and ensure the information is up to date.
  • To ensure the schools compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The FGB regularly receives presentations and case-studies from members of staff to provide insight into the work of the school and the challenges it faces.  These may include, for example, details about additional help (or interventions) being given to a particular group of children in the school where the performance data has suggested extra support would be beneficial.  Please note the governors only ever see anonymised data and will never be given access to data about individual pupils.

Finance & Property Committee

The main functions of the Finance & Property (F&P) Committee are:

The schools finances are managed according to strict guidelines.  It is the role of the F&P Committee to annually review the Finance Policy and levels of financial delegation and to ensure that the ‘Schools Financial Value Standard’ is followed and that an annual return is made to the Local Authority to show there is a robust system of monitoring and internal control in place.

This committee also maintains a balanced three year budget which is used to plan the schools expenditure and ensure that there are clear links to the School Improvement and Staffing plans.

  • Maintain a strategic overview of the schools financial planning.
  • Evaluate proposed expenditure following recommendations from the Headteacher.
  • Benchmark the schools financial performance against similar schools.
  • Monitor and evaluate spending of the Pupil Premium & Sports Premium.
  • Ensure all spending provides value for money.
  • Make regular reports on the work of the committee to the Full Governing Body.

This committee maintains an overview of the state of the school buildings through a regular property survey and is responsible for ensuring that there is a properly funded maintenance plan in place.

This committee also oversees the procurement of certain services through scrutiny of tenders for those services.

Personnel & Professional Development Committee

The Personnel & Professional Development (P&PD) Committee maintains an overview of the schools staffing structure in consultation with the Headteacher and establishes a pay and reward policy for all categories of staff and ensures this policy is correctly administered and reviewed.

The committee also ensures there are policies in place to handle matters of staff discipline, grievance, capability and redundancy based on guidance from the local authority.

In addition, the committee will also:

  • Oversees the appointment procedure for all staff (please note the Governing body are only directly responsible for the appointment of the Headteacher and Deputy Headteacher).
  • Establishes and keeps under review the performance management policy for all staff. 
  • Keeps under review staff work/life balance, working conditions and well-being, including monitoring of absence.
  • Will make recommendation on personnel related expenditure to the Finance & Property Committee.
  • Will consider appeals against pay and grading decisions.
  • Will consider staff complaints made to the Governing Body under the statutory complaints procedure.
  • Ensures all Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are in place and up-to-date.
  • Maintains an audit of Governor skills and training and recommends the assignment of governors to appropriate committees.

Curriculum Committee

This committee monitors pupil numbers, performance data and oversees curricular issues, focussing in particular on those which may have an impact on finance and personnel decisions.

This committee also coordinates monitoring visits to the school and where necessary provides feedback to the Full Governing Body.

The committee monitors and regularly reviews the Curriculum policy.  It also oversees the statutory annual review of the School’s Sex Education Statement, Special Educational Needs Policy and Religious Education Statement.

The committee also monitors progress against the curriculum targets of the School Development Plan and regularly reviews the performance data for the school.

Where necessary meetings will take place with the lead professionals within the school to gain an understanding of the scope of the curriculum targets and the activities the school is conducting to achieve success.

The committee will evaluate the extent of success at the end of the set timescale and review pupil progress and attainment against the agreed targets.

Meeting Minutes

From September 2017 onwards, the agreed public minutes of all Full Governing Body and Committee meetings have been published online. Please use the link below to access these. Minutes from previous years are available upon request from the school office.

 

 

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