Local Governance

Mission Statement

The aim of the Governing Body is to provide confident, strategic leadership and to create robust accountability, oversight and assurance for education and financial performance at Smarden Primary and Nursery School. The three core functions of the Governing Body are:

• Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction
• Holding executive leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils, and the performance management of staff
• Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure its money is well spent.

As governors, we are committed to the school's ethos, and to making sure that the school promotes British values of equality, freedom, democracy, tolerance, personal responsibility, and the rule of law.

Governors are critical friends to the school's leadership team. By undertaking regular monitoring of all aspects of school life, we should not only discover progress and achievement, but also lack of progress and underachievement, if and where it is occurring. On this basis we can provide challenge, as well as support, to the senior leadership team, as appropriate. Monitoring visits and regular meetings of the Governing Body are reinforced by regular training and extensive support from TKAT (the academy chain to which our federated schools belong).

Governor monitoring visits are carried out in order to check what progress is being made against the School Improvement Plan throughout the academic year:

Each year the LGB produces a Governance Impact Statement, summarising their activities and achievements over the previous academic year. The latest can be found at the page.

Membership

There are several categories of governor. Parent governors and staff governors are elected by the parents and staff respectively to offer their particular skills and perspectives. Appointed governors are drawn from other parts of the Smarden community to provide connections with the wider world and additional professional skills and experiences, while Community governors have particular responsibility for the values at Smarden.

If you wish to contact the governors, please do so via the school contact details or you can email the Chair of Governors directly - Claire Summers - claire.summers@smarden-tkat.org

Structure

There are five meetings of the full Local Governing Body each academic year. They receive reports on the performance of both schools from the Head Teacher, and consider monitoring reports produced by individual governors on all aspects of the life of both schools, including pupil progress, attainment, behaviour, and wellbeing, as well as the ethos and values of the schools. In addition to this, there is a Finance Committee who have delegated responsibility.

Finance

The Finance Committee gives advice on setting and reviewing budgets in line with the School Improvement Plan.
 
The governors are judged by Ofsted, alongside the Head Teachers and their teams, for the quality of Leadership and Management at both schools.
All governors are volunteers and give up a considerable amount of time in the service of the schools.
Clerking and secretarial support is provided by Laura Pickard.
She can be contacted via Smarden Primary School on 01233 770316