Broadgate Primary School

The Governing Body have welcomed two new members, parent governor Jo Fordham and co-opted governor Simon Dowling.  These appointments were made in line with the existing Governors Skills Audit.  This Skills Audit is the appendix to the Governing Body Effectiveness Action Plan 2022-2023, a self-assessment carried out against the industry standard measures required to demonstrate our effectiveness as a Governing Body and where we can improve through identified actions.  This is reviewed regularly by Governors throughout the year to ensure action has been taken and that the plan remains relevant.  This will continue into the 2023–2024 academic year.  Following the resignation of Jo Hickling, Dannie Foulkes was appointed as a co-opted governor, leaving a parent governor vacancy which will be offered to parents in the autumn term 2023.  As Jo Hickling was the governor responsible for safeguarding, Debby Gibson has taken over this role in the interim.

Governors are involved in the recruitment and selection of key staff and use the appointment process to ensure that high quality staff are appointed who share the school’s mission statement, aims and continual strive for improvement. 

Governor expertise – the Governors bring a wide variety of expertise to the school and this helps to ensure the school is moving forward.  Recent new appointments to the Governing Body have strengthened existing skills in areas such as project management, procurement, leadership, past governor experience, legal and compliance and HR – and Governor involvement in sub-committee work allows the school to draw upon these skills.  Governors continue to build on their expertise by attending external training courses regularly.  The appointment of as training governor (Holly Cummins) has ensured that governor training is recent and relevant, and training needs of the governing body as a whole can be identified.  In the past year governors have undertaken Ofsted training and completed their Child Protection refresher training.  The Headteacher and Chair of Governors (Stacey Lalande) have continued to develop their working relationship.

Governors are closely involved with the monitoring of all areas of the School Development Plan and Key Priorities, and in order to make this monitoring more effective, members of the teaching and learning sub-committee now each hold responsibility for one aspect of the school development plan so that they are able to focus attention on the key actions linked to the plan.  They have invited key staff to present at teaching and learning sub-committee meetings and have been able to provide both support and challenge to school and subject leaders.  Governor responsibilities have been restructured moving away from having cohort link governors to having subject links in order to be able to monitor the quality of the school’s curriculum more effectively.  There are now governors linked to English, Maths, Humanities, Arts, STEM, PE and PSHE/RSE.  This has been highly effective and there has been much more governor presence in school in the last year, with governors meeting subject leaders, talking to pupils and reviewing the curriculum.  Each time a governor visits the school a report is written that is then shared with the full governing body.

Governors continue to be involved with the community as a whole, forming strong links, and representatives of the Governing Body attend board meetings for Horsforth Children’s Services and Horsforth, Headingley and Ireland Wood Children’s centre.