The role of a school Governor
Every school has a Governing Body, which sets the strategic framework for the School and works in partnership with the Headteacher. This includes setting the overall objectives and monitoring progress. The Governing Body works with the Head, who is responsible for the day-to-day running of the school including the management of the staff. Governors need to fulfil their statutory duties and ensure that the school complies with the statutory framework.
Governors work with the Headteacher to:
- Promote an ambitious vision for the school and high expectations of all pupils and teachers
- Improve the school and develop its capacity for sustained improvement by helping to develop high quality teaching, leadership capacity and high professional standards among all staff
- Ensure that all teaching staff benefit from appropriate professional development and that performance is rigorously managed
- Accurately evaluate the school’s strengths and weaknesses and use their findings to promote improvement
- Provide a broad and balanced curriculum that meets the needs of all pupils, enables all pupils to achieve their full educational potential and make progress in their learning, and promotes their good behaviour and safety and their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
- Promote pupils’ learning and progress in literacy and numeracy
- Engage with parents in supporting pupils’ achievement, behaviour and safety and their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
- Take steps to promote the safety of all pupils and ensure that they are safe in school
Additional Governors:
- Agree staffing levels
- Decide how the school should spend its budget and offer best value
- Encourage good relationships with parents and the local community
- Maintain and improve the school buildings and its site to meet current needs, and consider all aspects of health, safety and risk
- Agree and review policies and procedures - these should be consistent with the school's aims, ethos and values
- Governors support their school by acting as 'critical friends'. They ensure that all decisions are made in the best interests of pupils and regularly seek the views of children, parents/carers, staff and other stakeholders
Who are your Governors?
We are a group of volunteers who represent the school and wider community - Parents, Staff, Church, Diocese, and Local Authority. Foundation Governors of a church school also have to ensure that the school's distinctively Christian character is maintained. All Governors though, along with the Headteacher and Staff, aim to ensure that the school provides education of the highest quality within the context of Christian belief and practice. It encourages an understanding of the meaning and significance of faith and promotes Christian values through the experience it offers all its pupils. Governors usually sit for a term of 4 years (often with the opportunity to put their names forward for re-appointment when this period ends), and the Chairman and Vice Chairman are elected annually by the Governing Body.
Should you at any stage require information about governor related matters please e-mail Sarah Stevens or Andrew Pearson at info@chilworth.surrey.sch.uk or look at the Governors' Board in the school Entrance Lobby.
