What is the Governing Body?

The governing body at Byker Primary School consists of people who want to make a positive contribution to children’s education. Our Governing Body plays a vital role in the life and success of our school.

The Governing Body has 3 key responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership-setting the vision, ethos and direction of the school
• Accountability- acting as a 'critical friend' by supporting, challenging, and holding school leaders to account for the educational performance of pupils and effective management of resources
• Ensuring Financial Probability- making sure the school's ,money is well spent and always in the best intrests of our children.

What is a School Governor?

There are many types of Governors from different parts of the school community - parents, staff, community, local authority and church. This helps to ensure that the governing body has sufficient diversity of views and experience but does not mean that governors of a particular category "represent" that group on the governing body. For example, Parent Governors do not act as representative of the parents at school and do not report back to them.

The term of office for all governors is four years. If re-appointed or re-elected governors can serve for a further term(s).

Although it is a responsible job you do not have to have a background in any particular area to be a valued member of the governing body team. What matters most is your commitment to improving what happens in school for the benefit of all the children. Training and support is available to help you understand and carry out the role.

On average duties take several hours per month. At Byker Primary School we have about 2/3 meetings per term, usually after school hours.

These are some of the duties a Governor carries out, but we enjoy the huge satisfaction we get from seeing how rapidly the school is improving and feel valued for our part in it. We are a strong team with a variety of skills who work well together and have a shared commitment to continuing the journey together for the benefit of all our children in the future.

The minutes of our Governing Body meetings are available on request from the School Office.