What is the Governing Body?

The governing body at Byker Primary School consists of people who want to make a positive contribution to children’s education. School governors come from every walk of life. There are over 300,000 school governors in England and they form the largest volunteer force in the country. They have an important part to play in raising school standards through their three key roles:

Establishing accountability, by:

•  Setting the vision, values, and objectives for the school

•  Agreeing the school improvement strategy with priorities and targets

•  Meeting statutory duties

Our School Governors work closely as a team particularly with the Headteacher on a wide variety of tasks to ensure development of our school which include:

• Developing a strategic plan for the school;
• Determining school aims, policies and priorities;
• Setting targets alongside Headteacher;
• Monitoring and evaluating the work of the school;
• Appointing staff;
• Managing the budget;
• Securing high levels of attendance and good standards of pupil behaviour;
• Ensuring that all children in the school have access to a broad and balanced curriculum;
• Ensuring the health and safety of pupils and staff.

What is a School Governor?

There are many types of Governors from different parts of the school community - parents, staff, community, local authority and church. This helps to ensure that the governing body has sufficient diversity of views and experience but does not mean that governors of a particular category "represent" that group on the governing body. For example, Parent Governors do not act as representative of the parents at school and do not report back to them.

The term of office for all governors is four years. If re-appointed or re-elected governors can serve for a further term(s).

Although it is a responsible job you do not have to have a background in any particular area to be a valued member of the governing body team. What matters most is your commitment to improving what happens in school for the benefit of all the children. Training and support is available to help you understand and carry out the role.

On average duties take several hours per month. At Byker Primary School we have about 2/3 meetings per term, usually after school hours.

These are some of the duties a Governor carries out, but we enjoy the huge satisfaction we get from seeing how rapidly the school is improving and feel valued for our part in it. We are a strong team with a variety of skills who work well together and have a shared commitment to continuing the journey together for the benefit of all our children in the future.

The minutes of our Governing Body meetings are available on request from the School Office.