The role of the Governing Body is to provide confident, strategic leadership and to create robust accountability, oversight and assurance for educational and financial performance.

The Governing Body at Bishopstone is ambitious that all young children are infused with a passion for education and a commitment to continuous school improvement ensuring the best possible outcomes for all.

The Governing Body has 3 core responsibilities:

• Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction.
• Holding leaders to account for the educational performance of the organisation and its pupils and the performance management of the staff.
• Overseeing the financial performance of the organisation and making sure money is well spent.

Effective governance is based on six key features:

• Strategic leadership that sets the vision, ethos and strategy.
• Accountability that drives up the educational standards and financial performance.
• People with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity.
• Structure that reinforces clearly the defined roles and responsibilities.
• Compliance with statutory and contractual requirements.
• Evaluation to monitor and improve the quality and impact of governance.

The Governing Body at Bishopstone is made up of volunteers with a variety of skills, qualities and experience who make up the committees listed below:

• Full Governing Body
• Finance, Resources and Risk
• Performance and Standards
• Appeals panel
• Pay committee 

Please feel free to talk to any of our governors about their roles at Bishopstone. Our Parent Governors, Tara Zimmer and Jo Morris, are very friendly, if you have any questions or concerns they will happily point you in the right direction.

Membership

At any one time, the LGB at Bishopstone will consist of:

• Two parents elected or appointed in accordance with the articles of association 

• The headteacher in an ex-officio role.

• A minimum of one staff governor elected by staff of the school in addition to the ex-offcio headteacher role 

• Up to three co-opted governors appointed by the local governing body with or without voting rights on a period of office for up to 4 years to provide additional skills and capacity as needed. 

• Up to two foundation governors nominated by the church.

• One governor appointed by the Local Authority.

You can view our 2023-24 Governors Record Here

Register of Interests and Attendance

Every year the governors complete a register of interests which is an up-to-date register of business and pecuniary interests of the governors and the headteacher. This is to make sure our board is transparent and open in all decision making.

• 2022-23 Register of Interests and Attendance  

The governors of Bishopstone Primary School believe it is important that boards reflect the diversity of the school communities they serve. Diverse boards promote inclusive school environments and provide diverse role models for staff and young people. The governors are currently collecting data on the diversity of the board, including data on age, gender and ethnicity. They will use that data to inform their recruitment and training needs and ensure there is always a diverse range of perspectives around the table to support robust decision making. Due to our relatively small governing body we do not publish this diversity data online as individual governors could be identified and we have a legal obligation to protect their personal data.