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Children, Families, Learning & Leisure Cabinet Member – Minutes – 13 August 2018

4   (4) LOCAL AUTHORITY SCHOOL GOVERNORS – The Director: Learning, Skills and Culture submitted a report seeking consideration of the appointment of suitable candidates to serve as local authority (LA) governors to schools.

Governing bodies were the key strategic decision making body for schools.  It was the governing body’s role to set a school’s strategic framework and to ensure that all statutory duties were met.  The Department for Education identified three main duties which were:

• ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction
• holding the head teacher to account for the educational performance of school and its pupils, and the performance management of staff
• overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure its money was well spent.

When a LA governor vacancy occurred, the relevant governing body identified the necessary skills, knowledge and experience that would be required of the successful candidates.  The LA nominated suitable candidates to the school and the governing body decided whether the nominee met their requirements.  The governing body may choose to reject or appoint the candidate accordingly.

Resolved – That the following applicants be recommended for appointment as Local Authority Governors to the board of governors of the schools listed below:

5 (5) RECONSTITUTION OF THE BRIDGE FEDERATION GOVERNING BODY – The Director: Learning, Skills and Culture submitted a report seeking approval of the instrument of government to allow the governing body of The Bridge Federation to be reconstituted, to be effective from 1 September 2018.

At the full governing body meeting of The Bridge Federation held on 11 June 2018, the governors voted to reconstitute the governing body in line with the School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2012 and the School Governance (Constitution) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.

The above regulations set out the options available to schools in terms of the overall number of governors, the categories of governor and the guiding principles for the constitution. The regulations gave the governing body more flexibility with their constitution and stated that they should be no bigger than they need to be to carry out their statutory duties. The regulations stipulated the categories and number of governors for maintained schools as follows:

• 2 parent governors (minimum)
• 1 Local Authority governor (maximum)
• 1 staff governor (maximum)
• 1 head teacher
• As many co-opted governors as necessary to fulfil the skills requirements. Up to a maximum of one third of governors could be staff members.

The constitution of each governing body was laid down in a document known as the instrument of government. A governing body may at any time have requested changes to their constitution, in accordance with the regulations, by varying their instrument of government.

Where changes were proposed, a maintained school’s governing body must have prepared a draft instrument of government and submitted it to the local authority for approval.

If the local authority was not content with the draft instrument of government it must have advised the governing body and given reasons. If it was not possible for the local authority and the governing body to agree on a revised draft, the local authority would have produced a final draft for the school as they think fit.

The constitution of the governing body in the form of an instrument of government was detailed at Appendix 1 of the report.

Resolved – That the new instrument of government for The Bridge Federation, be approved.

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