Governance Statement 

for School Year September 2021- July 2022

The Governors are committed to providing strategic direction and resources to support each member of the school community to draw out the light and diverse gifts of every child and person. The unity of purpose throughout the school provides a dynamic virtue based culture and curriculum in order that all may flourish, learning about ourselves and one another - pupils and staff alike.

The school will nurture the childrens’ personal development, to equip them with the academic, social and emotional skills to make a successful transition to secondary school. We will endeavour to ensure that your child will have joyful and enriching experiences, beyond the academic excellence offered, in a personalised, child centred, Christ centred learning environment.

Anna Murphy-Sullivan

Chair of Governors

 

The purpose of governance is to provide confident and strong strategic leadership which leads to robust accountability, oversight and assurance for educational and financial performance.

 

School governance has three core functions:

 

• Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;

• Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils, and the effective and efficient performance management of staff; 

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

 

The key features of effective governance:

Governors must be ambitious for all children and infused with a passion for education and a commitment to continuous school improvement that enables the best possible outcomes. Governance must be grounded in reality as defined by both high-quality objective data and a full understanding of the views and needs of pupils, staff, parents, carers and local communities. It should be driven by inquisitive, independent minds and through conversations focussed on the key strategic issues which are conducted with humility, good judgement, resilience and determination.

 

The features of effective governance are common across the education sector and share their fundamental principles with governance in the charity and business sectors.

Effective governance is based on the following key features;

 

• Strategic leadership that sets and champions vision, ethos and strategy.
• Accountability that drives up educational standards and financial performance.
• People with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity. 
• Structures that reinforce clearly defined roles and responsibilities. 
• Compliance with statutory and contractual requirements.
• Evaluation to monitor and improve the quality and impact of governance.

 

How we approach this: 

The Full Governing Body meets every term, and receives reports on progress on delivery of Vision Strategy, and the Catholic Life of the school, in addition to updates from the two sub committees: Finance & Resources (F&R) chaired by Neville Conn and School Improvement Plan and Standards (SIPS), chaired by Joanna Hooper, all of which have been organised to provide coverage for a robust cycle of creating, monitoring and reviewing the vision strategy, they meet every half term.

Our Governing Body draws expertise from a wide range of professional sectors and experiences represented by the governors.  Vision Strategy 2022, looks beyond narrow academic performance measures and commits to a broader curriculum and quality of the whole education experience offered at school.  While both supporting and holding the senior leadership team (SLT) to account for the delivery of the vision, governors understand not all improvement priorities are quantitative and some of the most important outcomes will not lend themselves to simple quantitative measurement.

The role of governors may be characterised as that of a ‘critical friend’, in relationship with the staff and families of the school, while able to challenge the school to constantly strive to do better in a constructive way.