Meet our Governors

Who we are and what we do:

Many people don’t know what a school governor is. That’s probably because we work quietly behind the scenes, meeting regularly with the Head Teacher and other school staff to ensure that St Nick’s continues being a school we can all be proud of. But what exactly do we do?

As governors of a local authority school, we are all responsible to the county council for the effective management of our school’s finances and resources, as well as for its educational standards. While the headteacher is responsible for the day-to-day running of the school, our job is to take a more strategic view. Our duties include:

• working with staff to set high academic standards and targets to ensure our school constantly strives to achieve
• helping to recruit staff
• monitoring the way in which the school spends its money
• acting as a ‘critical friend’ to our school, which means challenging issues where appropriate but also offering support and advice
• helping our school to respond effectively and in a timely manner to parents’ concerns
• ensuring that our school is accountable to the public for what it does
• planning for the future, developing policies and keeping our school under review
• ensuring that our school is fair to individual pupils or staff in certain kinds of disputes.

For further information on becoming a Governor please visit the Oxfordshire County Council Website.

Committees

As well as belonging to the governing body more generally, we also all serve on at least one committee. These all are split according to different aspects of running the school and are:

• Personnel, Premises and Resource (eg staffing, premises maintenance, health & safety, safeguarding and financial matters)
• Community & Vision (eg the school’s own community matters and its presence outside)
• Learning (eg educational attainment, targets, challenges and successes)

Curriculum Support/SDP

Groups of governors and staff regularly reflect on and plan for different areas of learning in the school. The groups are divided into six areas:

1. Helping Pupils to become better writers.
2. Continuing to raise standards and ensure consistency in the quality of Teaching and Learning throughout the School.
3. Ensuring EVERYONE makes as much progress as they can.
4. Ensuring that we have a broad and balance curriculum that meets everyone’s needs and prepares pupils for the next stage in education and for life.
5. Helping pupils to take responsibility and behave well at all points wihtin the school day and with all adults.
6. Developing the CIRB provision.

Parent Governors

Parent governors are elected by the parents of pupils at our school. To be nominated, they must be parents of children currently at St Nick’s at the time of the election. Parents are elected for a four-year term of office and do not have to stand down if their child leaves school during that period, though they may do so if they wish. Every parent of a child at this school has the right to stand as a candidate and to vote in the election, which is held by secret ballot. Parent governors may stand for re-election at the end of their term of office, if they still qualify.

If you would like to know more about the role of the parent governors or the duties and responsibilities of the Governing Body, please contact the Chair of Governors through the school.

Other Governors’ Terms of Office

Further Governor Information

• Governor Attendance 2024-2025

• Information about School Governors eg. term of office and who appointed the governors