The Head has resigned

A bit of a shock; the Head - who I like and think has done a great job to improve the school - has resigned. So now we have to recruit a new one, although the option is available to appoint an acting Head in the meantime (as any new Head would presumably have to give a term's notice, so if we can't find someone before the end of this term, we wouldn't get them in before the next school year).

Obviously I won't be able to talk about the confidential aspects of any discussion, but it will be very interesting to see the process and hopefully to get involved. In my opinion, selecting a new Head is the most important task the Governors can undertake for a school.

I'd be interested in any comments from people who have been through this experience.

Quiz answers

The answers to the quiz...

1. HT - Head Teacher (that's an easy one to start off with!)
2. GB - Governing Body
3. SIP - School Improvement Plan
4. PANDA - Performance and Assessment Report - this is produced by Ofsted for your school
5. SEN - Special Educational Needs (the co-ordinator is the SENCO)
6. NQT - Newly Qualified Teacher
7. FSM - Free School Meals
8. EAL - English as an Additional Language (when I was at school this was ESL - English as a Second Language. I suppose some pupils might have English as their third language though...)
9. NPQH - National Professional Qualification for Headship - you want your HT to have this!
10. PTR - Pupil Teacher Ratio

Quite a handful. There are others, but I shaln't bore you with them unless they come up in future events.

Acronym quiz

As promised, a quick quiz to give you some idea of the acronyms that we ought to be familiar with.

Can you tell what these are?

Answers after the weekend.

1. HT
2. GB
3. SIP
4. PANDA
5. SEN
6. NQT
7. FSM
8. EAL
9. NPQH
10. PTR

Who are school governors?

So, what sort of people are school governors?

Well, there are parents and staff, of course. The parents are a great bunch who really care about child welfare and performance - although they have a little more interest in their own child's class than the rest! The staff include both teaching and non-teaching members, and are also very caring people, although we have one union activist who usually has a different viewpoint to offer. Both parent and staff governors are elected by their peers, and they serve a 4 year term - the other governors have no power to remove them unless they stop attending meetings. The Head is automatically a governor too¹.

Then there are LEA governors, who are appointed by the local authority to serve at a particular school. These made up most of the governors I met at training sessions - probably because it's easier for them to get the time off to attend, as it's part of their job! I had initially worried that they would turn up with a very definite agenda and try to steer things, but in fact our LEA governors fit in very well. I've noticed that they tend to be on more subcommittees than the others, but this may be a coincidence.

There are also community governors - that includes me. These are people active in the local community, either residents or businesspeople. They are appointed directly by the other governors, and can be de-appointed by the others too. In my case, I saw an advert in the local paper, and applied directly to the governing body.

In a faith school, there are foundation governors instead of community governors. These are appointed by the diocese.

From all of these people, we elect a chair. The chair has more power than merely hosting meetings - they should be the first port of call for anyone approaching the governors, they can take action in an emergency, and they can investigate things themself (such as a complaint about the Head) before deciding whether to bring them to the rest of us. However if you're in a faith school, chances are that you will have the priest or vicar as the chair by default and you're stuck with him, like it or not!

So there are quite a range of people, all with different interests and some varying opinions. However, we have no individual responsibility - only as a group; we must accept and abide by majority decisions. As a group we do have a lot of responsibility - for spending the budget, for hiring the Headteacher, for setting policies and assessing progress - it's rather like running a business which just happens to have child customers. So far, I'm enjoying the challenge.

Next time I will post a quiz to see if you can handle the huge number of acronyms we have to get our heads around. For example, what on earth is a PANDA?

[1. Thanks to Ian Grey who corrects me on this; the Head can choose not to be a governor if they wish.]

Introduction to me, and this blog

Having been inspired by work-related blogs (such as Random Acts of Reality, The Policeman's Blog and The Law West of Ealing Broadway) I realised my experiences as a school governor might be interesting to others. It's something I only want to write about in a blog so it can be anonymous. I'll use this blog to explain what governors do and how it works, as well as the turn of events at my school. If anyone would like me to tackle something specific, please email me.

So, a quick introduction. I'm a community governor at an inner city primary school, and I've been governor less than a year. In that time I've undertaken training (parts I and II of "Governor Induction" run by our local council) and been asked to be ICT Link Governor as I work with computers - a tenuous link but better that than something I know absolutely nothing about, I suppose.

I remember my first meeting, where several governors befriended me and told me how they feel about the school, all with passion, but all with their own agendas... I arrived to find the chair had just resigned citing a rift between headteacher and governors and I realised this would be a baptism of fire!

Shortly after that, the head took me around the school. Many things shocked me. The school had just bought some tables for lunchtime; before that, children had eaten packed lunches on the floor. The school had just had a cull of its oldest library books; these were being given to children who had no books at home. I can't conceive of not having had books at home! The uniform is basic and inexpensive, but there was a sign up asking for donations of clothes if possible. And so many rooms needed a lick of paint or more than that.

So I have jumped in at the deep end, and am swimming along with the other governors. There's a full governing body meeting this week, and I suspect I will be co-opted onto at least one committee...