THE JOHN OF GAUNT SCHOOL GOVERNORS
Minutes of the Governors’ Meeting
To be approved at next meeting
Thursday 27th June 2013
Time:
Place:
Present:
In attendance:
Apologies:
47/13
48/13
49/13
50/13
51/13
52/13
6.00pm
The Hub
Eerke Boiten, Andy Packer, Liz Summerson, Michelle Gaskin, Elaine Baldwin, Sarah
Bergg, Karen Diffey, Andrew Hawkins, Margaret Ruxton, Roger Bishton
Mike Gunston, Sian Jones
David Whewell, Sean Randall, Elliott Turner, Derek Barber, Paul Ivory, Becky Skinner
Apologies
Apologies were agreed.
JM has resigned as a governor.
Declaration of Business Interests
Governors were reminded to declare these as necessary.
Minutes and Matters Arising
04/13: still to be circulated;
23/13: Accessibility Plan – awaiting standard policy from LA which is to be issued in
September;
45/13: completed, on agenda.
Chair’s Report
Members Meeting: MR is now an appointed governor and RB is a member.
F&P Meeting: there is a proposal to allow the school, if necessary, to appoint an
unqualified teacher from September. The school have been unable to appoint a teacher
of Media Studies and English and there is an unqualified teacher within the school who
may be willing to fill the post of 0.5 Media Studies teacher on a temporary basis, and it
was felt to be better to make an appointment for the full academic year. EBo proposed
and LS seconded this proposal. The principle of appointing unqualified teachers would
be discussed at the C&L meeting on 4th July.
Head’s Report
Student numbers are very positive: Y7 has increased from 197 to 215 which means that
8 classes are now required. It is anticipated that these numbers will increase again by
September. At the Y12 induction day numbers were lower than expected, but the
school is forecasting around 110 students which is a substantial increase, mainly due to
the BTEC offering.
Permanent Catering Manager: closing date for applications was today and interviews
are to take place on Thursday. SB volunteered to attend.
AP apologised to governors for the recent late request for assistance at interviews.
There has been a huge amount of recruitment recently and he thanked EB for all her
hard work. It was asked why there has been so much recruitment and it was confirmed
that there has been lots of internal promotions, additional posts have been created as a
result of new funding and there has been the restructuring of ILD.
AHT interviews are to take place on Tuesday and LS volunteered to attend.
Governors reiterated that it is essential to have a governor present at all TLR and
contested internal post interviews.
Ofsted Action Plan
As a result of the requires improvement judgement, an action plan has been put in
place. An HMI is expected to come to the school next week for the first monitoring
visit. With the appointment of the new AHT there will be 3 AHTs focussing on T&L.
The Ofsted Action Plan was circulated. The 2 key focuses are the crucial aspects of
improvement stated in the Ofsted report with clear and simple success criteria so that
governors can hold the school to account. With every section, questions are provided
which governors can ask to establish progress, and which also give the teachers a clear
indication of where their focus should lie. This is a live document with color-coded
targets: the success criteria will turn green once achieved.
Leadership:
Monitoring: Ofsted stated that this was not rigorous enough. There is to be a review of
Performance Management within school and it will not only focus on lesson
SJ
53/13
54/13
observations. There will be a more continuous monitoring system throughout the
school.
Self-Evaluation: additional external verification will be sought for every judgement
that is made which will give the school more confidence to move forward.
Governors to systematically challenge the school. There is a need to reflect on the link
governor responsibilities. It was asked that link governors review their faculties 3
times a year which, it was agreed, would be possible for some, but not all governors. It
was felt that the link governor system is not consistently productive across all faculties,
and there was some discussion about how best to move forward. DOLs need to clarify
their expectations and it was suggested that governors could be provided with a crib
sheet to support them.
It was also suggested that a breakdown by subject of results should be provided to the
C&L committee at the main tracking points.
Target setting
This area was discussed at length. Our current targets for Y10 are set externally
(FFTD) so are objective, but they will fall below the national targets due to the strength
of the cohort. This may mean that the school is judged as not a good school, even
though the students will have achieved the required levels of progress. It was proposed
that aspirational targets could be set internally. It was stated that the governors want to
know that we are doing the best for every child rather than setting unrealistic targets to
please external bodies. It was also queried if these aspirational targets would put too
much pressure on students, but AP commented that it was a question of balance and
creating the right environment. Another view was that if this action plan is effective,
an uplift in results should be achieved.
In conclusion, it was agreed that the following needs to be resolved:
- Governor involvement: a new proposal required;
- Target setting: a middle course between achievable and aspirational results
needs to be sought.
All feedback was requested by 5th July.
Governor Evaluation
The results of the governor evaluation were circulated.
Key findings included:
- Skills’ audit needs to be conducted. Template is to be found and circulated.
- Governor vacancies were discussed and it was agreed that once the skills audit
is complete, there would be a need to seek governors with specific skills.
- Governors requested that documents be circulated at least a week in advance
so they have enough time to prepare for meetings and challenge effectively.
- EBo clarified that all training via Governor Services is free.
- Governors were reasonably happy with the committee structure.
- Governors asked that the SDP be included on a regular basis on committee
and BoG agendas.
- Clarification of the HT performance management was given. AP was happy
for his targets to be shared with all governors.
- Communication with parents: this is being reviewed by the Marketing
Working Party and will be included in the Marketing Plan.
- Succession planning is not really in place and tends to happen organically.
- Governors believed that they could see improvement in the school, but were
not sure how much they had influenced it. It was stated that a key part of the
governors’ role is to ensure that the correct people are recruited.
- Governors stated that a long term view was lacking and that this needed to be
discussed at the BoG in September.
AOB
All other items on the agenda will be discussed at the next BoG.
Home Study Day: as it is so close to the end of term, students believed that the work
would not be marked. It was confirmed that the work set would be displayed and there
would be peer review and discussion.
Meeting closed at 8.10pm. Next Governors’ Meeting: 18th July 2013
C&L/LS/EBo
MGu
MGu
All
SJ
SJ
SJ/AP
EBo
MR
SJ