Welcome to our Governors' section.
Welcome to the Governors' section for Jericho Primary School.
School Governors are an important part of school life and make an important contribution in supporting education in our school. School governors provide strategic leadership and accountability for our school. They work with the Head Teacher to make tough decisions about finance, staffing and resourcing as well as supporting and challenging the Head Teacher and other school leaders and staff to make sure we provide the best possible education for all our children.
Please find below details of how our Governing body is structured, including the names, categories, responsibilities and terms of appointment for each Governor.
We have also provided a Register of Governor Interests and an Annual Statement of Issues for your information.
Our Chair of Governors is Gary Gregg
Our Vice-chair of Governors is Michael Hawley
Main Roles of the Governing Body
The purpose of the governing body is to help the school provide the best possible education for its learners.
Its main roles are:
Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;
Governing bodies are the key strategic decision-making body of every school. It is their role to set the school's strategic framework and ensure all statutory duties are met. The governing body should ensure that the school has a medium to long-term vision for its future - which it may be helpful to articulate in a specific written vision statement. The governing body should also ensure that there is a robust strategy in place for achieving its vision. This strategy should address the fundamental questions of where we are now, where do we want to be, and how are we going to get there.
Holding the headteacher to account for the educational performance of the school and it's pupils, and the performance of the staff;
Governing bodies should work to support and strengthen the leadership of the headteacher, and hold them to account for the day-to-day running of the school, including the performance management of teachers. Governing bodies should play a strategic role, and avoid routine involvement in operational matters. It should focus strongly on holding the headteacher to account for exercising his/her professional judgement in these matters and all of their other duties. Effective governing bodies hold their headteacher and other senior school leaders to account for improving school performance by asking the right questions.
Overseeing the financial performance of the school and making its money well spent;
Governing bodies are responsible for making sure their school's money is well spent. They should do this by making sure they have at least one governor with specific skills and experience of financial matters, and by asking questions such as:
- Are we allocating our resources in line with our strategic priorities?
- Are we making full use of all our assets and efficient use of all our financial resources?
- Are other schools buying things cheaper or getting better results with less spending per pupil?
- How can we get better value for money from our budget?
Ensuring the voices of stakeholders are heard;
Our governing body believes that knowing our children and families well comes through strong engagement. Engaging with children, staff, parents and the wider community helps our governors to get to know the school and ensure robust decision-making.
The different categories of governors on our governing body are:
- parent governors who have a child in school at the time of their election, and are elected by the parents with children at the school;
- staff governors who are members of staff at the school and are elected by their colleagues;
- co-opted governors are appointed on to the governing body by the other members because they come from a specialist group, such as the business community or because they possess a particular skill which can contribute to the effective governance and success of the school;
- local authority(LA) governors who are nominated by the local councillor and appointed by the governing body;
- the Headteacher (HT) is also a member of the governing body by right of the position they hold in the school;
- associate members are not actually governors but can be appointed to serve on committees and attend meetings of the full governing body. They do not have the right to vote at meetings of the full governing body but have been given voting rights on the committees that they are a member of, but these rights can only be given by the governing body.
In 2018, our governing board agreed that our board would consist of 12 board members:
- 2 parent governors
- 1 LA governor
- 1 staff governor
- 1 headteacher
- 7 co-opted governors
Governing boards have a number of roles and responsibilities to fulfill. These are set out in the Governing Board Handbook - published by the Department for Education.
The full governing board can delegate a number of roles and responsibilities to its committees. At Jericho we have 3 main committees:
- Finance, Staffing, and Premises,
- Curriculum and Standards,
- Children's Well Being.
A number of other committees convene when needed such as the Pupil Discipline committee.
Below we have set out how we delegate various roles and responsibilities to individuals and committees.
The different committees our governing body has are:
- School Effectiveness / Curriculum - A committee that looks a the standards of work across the whole school in each curriculum area - Chaired by Mike Hawley
- Children's Well Being - A committee that looks at the personal, social, emotional and health side of our children including safeguarding and child protection - Chaired by Leanne Savage.
- Staffing, Finance and Premises - Our main committee for all aspects of Human Resources and the Financial Management of the school. We are also responsible for undertaking work around the management of our buildings, school grounds and the health and safety of our staff and children - Chaired by Bryan Conery
- There are also separate disciplinary and appeals committees that are convened if they are required.
Each committee's responsibilities are outlined in their terms of reference:
Our governing board can't function without good attendance. Each year we publish our attendance records for our meetings. As well as our full board and committee meetings, a number of our governors make regular visits to our school. We keep records of these individual visits in our school office.
Full Governing Board Attendance 2023-2024
Curriculum and School Effectiveness Attendance 2023-2024
Children's Well-being Attendance 2023-2024
Finance Staffing and Premises Attendance 2023-2024
Full Governing Board Attendance 2022-2023
Curriculum and Standards Attendance 2022-2023
Children's Well-being Attendance 2022-2023
Finance Staffing and Premises Attendance 2022-2023
Register of personal, pecuniary, or business interests 2023-2024
All the governors and associate members of Jericho Primary School listed below have signed the Register of personal, pecuniary, or business interests
This is a declaration of any personal or business interest they or any relative or person closely connected with them, have with businesses or other organisations that may have dealings with the school. This could for example include owning or having a relative work for a business that had dealings with school; having a relative working in or for school or being a governor of another school.
If any interest a governor has could be seen to cause a conflict of interest they would be asked to withdraw from any decision-making concerned. This is to ensure that our governors can always be seen to be putting the interest of the school first.
If there is a potential conflict it is shown in the table. This table also shows the category of governor each person is, any specific role on the governing body and the committees they are members of.
More information about the requirements to complete and sign the Register of personal, pecuniary or business interests can be found on Cumbria Country Council's Governor Services web pages at where you will also find the links to all other aspects of School Governance: Cumbria Governor Services
Governors
Diversity is important and we want our governing board to be increasingly reflective of the community we serve.
Schools are encouraged to collect and publish governing board members’ diversity data. Information collected is on a voluntary basis, and board members can opt out of sharing their information, including protected characteristics, at any given time including after publication. We will not publish any data that will identify individuals.