Governor Support Service

School and Governor Support is a specialist team providing a unique service, which offers bespoke and up-to-date expertise around all governance issues. The service will fully support governors, governing bodies, schools and academies to carry out their statutory roles and responsibilities. The main strength of the service is the knowledge and expertise of the team, who provide proactive, individually tailored consultancy to support the management and organisation of the school. As part of this service, customised training and development opportunities are provided to increase governors' knowledge and understanding of their role.

Under the agreement, for each governing body the support service will do the following:

Help the governing body to set agendas for meetings.
Produce all relevant documents needed for a meeting.
Post all documents to governors seven days before a meeting.
Provide a support officer at the governing body meetings to: record all business discussed; give advice to governors; report back on matters arising from previous meetings or correspondence; and send a copy of the meeting's 'minutes' (the official record of the meeting) to the headteacher and the chair of governors for them to approve.
Process any follow-up work from the meeting.
Keep in touch with and advise the headteacher and the chair of governors between meetings.
Make sure the governing body's documents contain all the information they must, by law, contain.
Run an advice line for all governors.
Produce a summary of actions agreed at meetings and provide this to all governors.
Produce reports for governors on all aspects of education, including any issues we want governors' views on.

Training and Development

The support service is committed to providing high quality training and development opportunities for governors and governing bodies. Induction training for new and inexperienced governors is held each term, and the service also provides a considerable range of training opportunities, for example relating to improving schools, safeguarding, safer recruitment, managing resources, employment, equality and diversity, school admissions and special educational needs.

Governing bodies pay the service a yearly charge for providing that training and development. In return, governors can get training on all aspects of being on a governing body and they do not have to pay any more for that training.