CHESTNUTS PRIMARY SCHOOL

Update from the Governors (Winter term 2017)

Date: 7th Jan 2018 @ 5:19pm

Welcome to the first of what will hopefully be termly blogs to update on the activities of the school's governing body.

For those who don't know much about who the governors are and what we do, we have updated the "Meet the Governors" page in the "Community" section of the website to provide more, up-to-date, information. There are further updates planned to add more details about who the governors are, but please check out the page in the meantime. 

We have welcomed a number of new governors this term, namely Kalvi Nadarajah (who applied to become our new parent governor following our advert earlier in the term and has a finance background), Maureen Duncan (a new co-opted governor having acted as exec headteacher at Chestnuts last Spring term and current headteacher at the The Brook Special Primary School), Lisa Jepson (a new co-opted governor and deputy headteacher at Park View) and Becky Martin (a new co-opted governor with a background in youth arts enrichment projects). The new governors bring a wealth and range of new experience and skills to the governing body which will strengthen our effectiveness going forward.  

The first term of each year always involves a fair bit of administration which is important to make sure the governing body runs smoothly but isn't the most exciting of topics. This includes tasks like reviewing the terms of reference and the work planners for each of the committees. Each governor also signed their Declarations of Interest form and reaffirmed their commitment to our Code of Conduct. The results of all this work can be found in our "Governance Map", which can be found at the bottom of the "Meet the Governors" page.

One of our first jobs this term was to sign off the School Development Plan (SDP). This is an important document which is developed between the school's leadership team and the governing body and sets out the priorities for the school going forward and grew out of a number of discussions in the Summer about how the school was currently measuring up against our Vision Statement. This year's SDP is a bit of a stop-gap while Mrs Horwood settles in to the school and as such only covers this academic year. However, we will also soon be starting the process of developing a longer-term (3 year) SDP which will guide the school's development for the future. The finalised SDP for this year can be found on the "School Improvement" page in the "About Us" section of the website and much of the governing body's work will revolve around monitoring the school's implementation of the SDP.

The rest of the governing body's work in the Winter term focused on approving a raft of new policies (some of which can be found on the "Policies" page in the "About Us" section), reviewing audits on areas such as safeguarding,  health & safety and financial procedures and monitoring the budget. We have also had discussions about the Co-Operative Trust, the school's home schooling provision and Haringey's new model of school improvement support, among many other things. I hope to make all our meeting minutes available on the governors page of the website shortly to improve the transparency of the governing body.

If you have any questions about the governing body then you can contact me via email at: [email protected] or leave a note with the school office who will pass it on.

Hugh Merritt (Chair of Governors)