Report to:

County Consultative Committee

 

Date of meeting:

 

15th November 2023

By:

Clare Cornford

Title:

Local Authority Governor appointments and Governor and Clerking Service Update for Councillors

Purpose:

To update Councillors on the nomination for appointment of local authority governors and governor training

 

RECOMMENDATIONS

1) For information

11        Background

1.1       The local authority has a statutory duty to approve nominations for local authority governors. Once nominated, schools then appoint local authority governors onto their governing board. 

1.2       This report provides a summary of local authority governor applications approved for nomination, and information about the level of governor vacancies across the county. 

2          Supporting information

2.1       Since the report sent to Councillors on the 12th July 2023, 14 local authority governors were nominated for appointment, all were approved for a 4 year term of office.  There were five new appointments and nine reapplications.

Iain Day

Cradle Hill

Reapplication

Isabel Hodger

Guestling-Bradshaw

Reapplication

Jenny Barnard-Langston

Bluebell Federation

Reapplication

Alison Doig

Woodlands Federation

Reapplication

James Pratt

St Thomas a Becket

Reapplication

Kevin Doherty

Battle & Langton CE Primary

Reapplication

Roger Elias

All Saint's CEP School

Reapplication

Kathy Robinson

Robertsbridge Community College

Reapplication

Michelle Warner

Harlands Primary School

Reapplication

Lucy Constantine

Wallands CP School

New Application

Simon Jones

Maynards Green Primary School

New Application

Zoe Holland

St Thomas a Becket CofE Federation

New Application

Katharine Rabson-Stark

Uckfield College

New Application

Ann Mason

Seaford Primary School

New Application

 

2.2 The Governor and Clerking Service has now embedded the new GovernorHub System for booking training and recording governor details. Out of the 1306 governors in maintained schools and academies who buy into the Governor and Clerking Service, only 185 have not yet signed up to the new system and we are working with these governors to onboard them. We have increased our communication methods with governors which has increased engagement and led to an increase in governors signing up for training sessions.

2.3 The Governor and Clerking Service has greatly enhanced the training, networking and briefing sessions for the 2023-4 academic year. A training session called “evidencing challenge” will support governors in effective challenge and holding school leaders to account. Clerks are also invited to this session and it will support them to capture and evidence the challenge in their minutes that Ofsted will look at.

Another new session is “governance of the primary curriculum”. This session ran twice in term 1 with 63 governors attending over the 2 sessions. Feedback included "This was a brilliant course, full of information and very practical. It did a great job of covering a complex area in a short amount of time. It will definitely shape our monitoring for the coming year." And “It was a really good informative session. Lots and lots of information given. Very logical sequencing of information”.

Another popular session is “be prepared for Ofsted. An experienced governor who attended this session fed back “probably the most informative and best training course I attended in 2 years”.

Of the 107 governing boards who subscribed to the Governor and Clerking Service SLA, every single board has accessed at least one governor training, networking and briefing session in the last academic year. 

2.4 There have been 76 new governors appointed since the 1st September 2023 in maintained schools. There has also been some further success with the Governor Recruitment Campaign, with 10 people expressing an interest in becoming a governor since the meeting in July. The Governor and Clerking Service are working with Governors for Schools to support the recruitment campaign as they have a lot of corporate contacts within local and national companies that East Sussex schools will be able to access.

2.5 Clerking: As it currently stands the locum clerk service have supported 8 meetings across 5 schools since September. We also provide support and advice to the schools who are without clerks to come up with innovative methods to recruit new clerks. This includes vacancy promotions on the school website, in the school newsletter, in school promotion i.e. posters. Promoting vacancies at school fairs/fetes and events, speaking to friends and neighbours who may be interested. Also reaching out to parents of children in reception who may be interested in returning to work now that they’re children are in school.

Our current cohort of locum clerks are working this role in addition to their normal clerking roles, some of our locum clerk at multiple schools, so we are always impressed by their commitment to supporting our schools and know they are rewarded in increasing their experience and knowledge in clerking too.

We have recently recruited another locum clerk to our pool and have received multiple registers of interest in becoming a locum, so we are looking forward to the development of the locum clerk service within our service offer to schools. 

 

Clare Cornford
Governor and Clerking Service Officer

Contact Officer: Clare Cornford
Email: clare.cornford@eastsussex.gov.uk

 

 

BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS

None