Notes from Tyntesfield Governing Body Meeting — Summer 2017

This is my first blog post as Chair of Governors at Tyntesfield Primary School, in Sale, Manchester. I’ve committed (to myself) to writing these short posts at least as often as we have full governing body meetings (and hopefully more frequently than that).

We had our full governing body meeting at Tyntesfield on Tuesday night (16th May). While it’s an important element of our role that we meet to make decisions, approve minutes, and discuss changes to legislation, the real joy of the meetings comes from talking about what’s been going on in the school.

In our meetings, Mrs Spark gives a termly report, detailing changes and other noteworthy events in the school. The most significant thing to have happened in the time since our last meeting, in February, is that Mrs Spark was asked to help at the Bollin Primary School, by stepping in as Interim Headteacher to help the school at this time. We are delighted that we’ve been able to support Mrs Spark and the Bollin in this way — our role as National Support School means we are very well-equipped to do it.

On a similar note, we had the opportunity to formally thank Mrs Wright and Mrs McDonald for stepping up as acting head and deputy head of our school — they have done an incredible job, and it’s important to recognise that, both by thanking them face-to-face, and in the official minutes. In fact, all staff in the school have been amazing throughout this period, and I feel that us governors have played our part as well.

Governing body meetings are also a great opportunity for governors to update the board on the sorts of things they’ve been doing with the school. Almost all governors have a specific subject that they lead on for the governing body — science , history, maths, etc — and we work with the subject lead teachers in the school to provide support (and challenge!). In the past few months, Governors have done a variety of things, such as:

• Interviewed children for the Rolls Royce Science Prize diary entries (more on this in a future blog-post)
• Visited Waterstones bookshop with a group of children to select new books for the school (funded by the PTA — thanks, PTA!)
• Supported the school during SATs week by being an extra pair of eyes
• Observed an EYFS session in Mrs Pope’s class
• Took part in Right and Responsibilities day

and many other visits to school to talk to staff, and keep in touch with what’s going on.

Finally — we’ve put in place an action plan to continue to improve as a governing body. We need to get sharper about recording the work we do with the school, and make sure we continue to take advantage of the huge range of training courses available to us.

Please feel free to contact us if you want more information about anything here, or anything else that the Governing Body are involved in.

Jamie

Chair of Governors

@tyntesfieldgov