Governors

The Role of Governors

All governors in schools have three core functions:

• Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;

• Holding executive leaders (headteachers) to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils and the performance management of staff;

• Overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure its money is well spent.

Governors at Charles Darwin Community Primary School

As a governing board, we are proud to be involved with Charles Darwin Community Primary School. The children work hard and behave well; the staff strive to achieve the best outcomes for the pupils they teach and there is a strong leadership team that drives the school forward with a good knowledge and understanding of the needs of the children which goes beyond improving their academic standards. There is a determination by all to achieve the statement ‘Charles Darwin Community Primary School - where learning is a joy’.

We have different types of governors with a range of skills and expertise:

• Parent governors – elected by parents or carers of pupils in the school;

• Local Authority governor – nominated by the Local Authority and appointed by the governing body;

• Co-opted governors – appointed by the governing body for the skills and expertise they can bring to the governing body;

• Staff governors – appointed by the staff.

What we do

We meet as a full governing body 6 times each school year and in addition, we may have additional meetings for training or to look in greater depth at a particular aspect of the school, for example, performance data received from the DfE, ‘Inspection Data Summary Report’ or ‘Analyse School Performance’.

As governors, we are not involved in the day-to-day running of the school, that is the responsibility of the headteacher and staff. Much of our work is around monitoring the School Development Plan where the priorities for the year are laid out. We meet with the headteacher, senior leaders and members of staff throughout the year and we also visit the school to undertake ‘learning walks’ to help us gather information to help us ensure that the school is working towards achieving its improvement plans. As governors we agree that the best bit is the opportunity to meet with pupils alongside members of staff and talk to them about particular issues, again often linked to the school priorities.

We have governors who are linked to statutory areas such as Safeguarding and Special Educational Needs but our other link roles can change depending on what the priorities are for the school in any given year.

You can find further information about the school's governing body, including terms of office, on the Get Information for Schools website - our school DfE reference number is 111053 - please use the following link GIAS Website

You can contact our chair of governors (Mrs Jen Macdonald) on this email: chair@charlesdarwin.cheshire.sch.uk

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