Governance

Governors
The Governing Board of Primrose Lane consists of parents, staff, appointees of the Local Authority and members co-opted from the local community. This helps ensure the governing board has sufficient diversity of skills, views and experience but does not mean governors of a particular category represent that group on the governing body. For example, parent governors do not represent the parents at the school and do not report back to them.

How do I contact the governors?
In order to contact the governors you will need to get in touch with the school in the first instance and they will make the contact on your behalf. You will not be able to contact the governors directly, but the school will treat your contact in confidence where appropriate and act as a mediary. If you need to make a complaint about the school and involve governors you will need to follow the school's complaints procedure.

The role of governors
Governors serve for four years and the best way to sum up the role of the Governing Board is ‘eyes on, hands off’ and it is carried out through three main approaches:

• being strategic – for example target setting, agreeing the ethos of the school, setting the priorities in the School Development Plan (SDP), ensuring that the standards of teaching and learning are as high as possible, setting the budget to support the SDP and approving policies
• being a critical friend – including understanding school self-evaluation, monitoring and evaluating school performance, delegating decisions, recognising and celebrating the achievements of the school, being prepared to ask challenging questions in a supportive way, thereby securing improvement and being an ambassador for the school in the local community
• being accountable – this includes being prepared to account for the school's overall performance and to explain its decisions and actions to anyone who has a legitimate interest, ensuring that all statutory obligations are met and reporting to parents and others on the work of the school including the achievements of the pupils.

The chair and vice-chair are elected annually by the governors at the first meeting of the autumn term. The full Governing Board and its two committees: Resources and Teaching and Learning, meet every half term. Minutes of these meetings are available from the school office. The Headteacher produces a report for the governors each term and these are also available from the office.

Our governors don't just sit in meetings! They are proactively involved in the life of the school, many through their class link: visiting the class, going on school trips and celebrating special events, such as Nativity and the KS2 Production. To fulfil their various responsibilities, governors also undertaken focused visits to monitor a specific aspect of school life, before reporting back to their fellow governors.

Effective governance
At Primrose Lane we are fortunate to have such a dedicated and hardworking board of governors. Our governors are effective because they:

• care about improving children's educational experiences and achievement
• want to contribute to the local community
• are able to work as part of a team and value the contribution made by different people
• are willing to get the necessary training for the role
• are willing and able to ask questions and offer healthy and constructive challenge
• are open to ideas and willing to learn.

The Governing Board of Primrose Lane
The Governing Board of Primrose Lane is made up as follows:

Thank you!
We thank our governors wholeheartedly for all that they do for our school! The additional time, thought and effort they put into being a governor is all on a voluntary basis and often in addition to their own work commitments and busy home life.