Governor Service
The Service Offer
Subscription Services
Buy as You Need Services
Training Courses
Subscription services
The WES Governor Development Subscription provides your governing body with unlimited bookings on our centre-based training courses outlined in our latest brochure.
This year we introduce a number of changes to help you make the best of the time you devote to training.
- To ensure that all new volunteers receive a proper grounding in practical governance, we are raising the bar with a one day Induction course – more hands-on than the old 2 hour Induction, and more accessible than the 2 day Foundation course.
- For experienced governors, we have introduced a new Essentials Update session.
- For chairs and aspiring leaders, we have a new “Leading School Improvement” course, and in partnership with ELC, we propose places on the National College Chairs’ Leadership Development Programme.
- Focusing on school improvement, we offer a range of new courses notably a governor’s guide to Quality of Teaching, Closing the Gap, Engaging with Parents, a two part School Improvement overview, and two new courses for Special School governors.
- On the Resources front, we reintroduce an updated Head Teacher Appraisal course, and there is an additional “module 2” Budgeting course.
- For clerks, there is a new course on clerking panel hearings, and we now offer a nationally recognised accreditation programme.
- Existing courses have been updated to reflect the latest requirements.
As part of a close collaboration between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, schools and academies that subscribe to either Local Authority’s Governor Services have full access to the centre based governor training programmes available in both counties.
Subscribers are also entitled to an annual in-house training session customised to your needs, and new this year, a desktop healthcheck of four key indicators. You will have access to a dedicated governor helpline providing advice and support on all governance matters. For any additional services you need beyond the standard subscription, you will benefit from a reduction in the standard charge, including for extra in-house training sessions.
For two or more academies working in collaborative partnerships, our Collaborative Subscription enables governing bodies to plan and receive joint training sessions as well as receiving the other benefits of the main subscription. Please contact us to discuss your requirements for this service.
This provides a full clerking service to ensure the effective operation of your governing body for six meetings per year. This can include committee meetings as well as full governing body meetings up to six meetings in total per year.
The service includes:
- Production of effective meeting minutes
- Guidance on regulations, policies and procedures and statutory website content
- Advice on constitution and elections
- Maintenance of governing body records
- Unlimited access for your clerk to our helpline for advice.
This provides a full clerking service to ensure the effective operation of your governing body for 10 meetings per year. This can include committee meetings as well as full governing body meetings up to 10 meetings in total per year.
The service includes:
- Production of effective meeting minutes
- Guidance on regulations, policies and procedures and statutory website content
- Advice on constitution and elections
- Maintenance of governing body records
- Unlimited access for your clerk to our helpline for advice.
This provides a full clerking service to ensure the effective operation of your governing body for 12 meetings per year. This can include committee meetings as well as full governing body meetings up to 12 meetings in total per year.
The service includes:
- Production of effective meeting minutes
- Guidance on regulations, policies and procedures and statutory website content
- Advice on constitution and elections
- Maintenance of governing body records
- Unlimited access for your clerk to our helpline for advice.
We help you to ensure your governing body has the knowledge, skills and confidence to exercise effective governance of your academy and to support governors’ engagement in their school’s strategic improvement priorities. We know the importance of an effective partnership between governing body and head teacher in securing strong leadership and raising standards. We work with governors and heads to help your academy deliver the best possible education outcomes for your pupils.
Benefits
- We provide relevant, up to date training delivered by experienced governors and leaders to ensure your governing body has access to the range of skills and knowledge expected by Ofsted, the DfE and others.
- Our guidance and course content is focused on identifying practical solutions to your governance questions, not just theory.
- We offer training and development opportunities to enable governors to be prepared and ready to meet Ofsted requirements.
- As an integral part of Warwickshire’s Education & Learning team, we work in close partnership with your academy’s Learning Improvement Officer, to ensure our work complements other LA school improvement support.
- We provide governance support to governors and clerks, to head teachers and school business managers.
Why Buy our Service
An effective governing body holds an academy to account effectively for its performance and works in partnership with the head teacher to secure high quality teaching and improved outcomes for pupils. Carrying out the statutory duties required of governance, particularly those related to finance, staff performance and effective implementation of statutory policies requires a governing body with the right mix of skills and abilities to enable them to fulfil their responsibilities.
Our Service provides access to a wide range of training, support and guidance to enable you to have an effective governance structure which makes the best use of governors’ time and skills. We aim to help chairs and clerks to distribute governance responsibilities across all members of the governing body.
The Effectiveness of our Service
- We have added new course topics to meet changing needs of governance.
- Last year we ran over 86 centre based training courses and 80 customised in-house governor training sessions
- 95% of Warwickshire schools and Academy governing bodies accessed our training last year
- 100 % of queries to the Governor helpline are responded to within 5 days.
