St Peter Chanel has a team of Governors who take an active role in supporting the School’s efforts to improve and maintain the highest possible educational standards. Working alongside the Head Teacher we oversee the success of the school, agree priorities, monitor and evaluate performance. Between us, we come from varied professional backgrounds so have a good mixture of expertise and skills.

What do we do?

We are responsible for upholding the Catholic ethos of the school, setting the strategic direction of the school, for over-seeing the curriculum taught and approving the budget. 

The Head Teacher (who is also a Governor) makes the day to day decisions about the running of the school.

The Government and Ofsted have high expectations of Governing Bodies and Leadership. When inspected, Ofsted will evaluate how effectively governors challenge and hold senior leaders to account for all aspects of the school’s performance and how they ensure financial probity.

How do we achieve this?

Much of our work is conducted at termly meetings of our 3 Committees, Curriculum, Staffing and Resources prior to a termly meeting of the full Governing Body.
• Curriculum - oversees the school curriculum.
• Staffing - oversees all staff employed at the school.
• Resources - oversees finance, health and safety and premises. 
The full Governing Body meets at least four times each year, receives reports from the Head Teacher, considers reports and recommendations from the sub committees, makes decisions and conducts routine business.

Our responsibilities include: 

• Having an input into, and reviewing, the School Development Plan and Self Evaluation Form.
• Helping and supporting the Senior Leadership Team with their aims, policies and priorities for the school.

• Assisting with the recruitment of all staff and monitoring levels of staff retention.
• We help our Senior Leadership Team make decisions on our school’s budget
• Monitoring and evaluating the work of the school and pupil attainment.
• Challenging weaknesses and underperformance.
• Reviewing progress against the school’s School Development Plan.
• Monitoring levels of attendance and good standards of pupil behaviour.

Safeguarding

This is one of our main responsibilities where we monitor any incidents that are regarded as a Safeguarding issue. The Chair of Governors, Mrs P Slonecki, is the Safeguarding Governor and has regular contact with the Head Teacher regarding Safeguarding. She meets with the Head Teacher once a term to discuss any issues that have arisen.

Additionally, Governors regularly visit the school so that we know and understand what is going on, and the effect of the decisions we make. Governors carry out a Learning Walk once a term to see first-hand the work that is being done in the school. They have the opportunity on these Learning Walks to talk to pupils about their work, look at books and monitor the behaviour of children across the school. They feed back to Senior Leaders at the end of their visits.

Link Governors:

Each Governor is linked every year to an area identified as a key priority in the School Development Plan. They visit the school once a term to meet with the member of staff responsible for their particular area and report back on their findings to the Governing Body.

 Minutes of Governor meetings can be viewed on request. Please speak to the school office.

Types of Governors explained:
•  Foundation Governors: appointed by the Diocese of Southwark.
•  Parent Governors: elected onto the governing body by other parents from the school, and are parents of children in attendance at the school.
•  Staff Governors: elected onto the governing body by staff at the school.
•  Local Authority (LA) Governors: appointed by the Local Authority.