School Governor

Role Overview

As a Governor with The Thinking Schools Academy Trust, your role is to perform a ‘non-executive’
strategic function, uphold the values of the school & Trust and ensure the school deliver a good
quality of education to all our students. You will be supporting and holding to account the leaders
who are responsible for the operational and strategic running of the school. You will be talking about
how the school is performing, as well as thinking about the future and how they can improve, to
offer the best possible education and experience to its students to transform their life chances.

Commitment

Academy Governing Boards will meet or engage with the school once per term, six times per year.
In order to fulfil their responsibilities, Governors need to engage with the school in a variety of ways.
These will include attendance at all meetings, school visits and (where available) contribution to
panel hearings such as Governor Discipline Panels to review suspensions & exclusions.

Specific Role Details

Academy Governing Boards (AGBs) are a skills-based governing body, with people who have skills in
areas such as Education, Human Resources and Safeguarding. AGBs have delegated responsibility to
have oversight of the performance of Academies and work within their Terms of Reference which
are outlined within the document.
You will have the opportunity to take on a link role that is aligned with your
skills/experience/interests that will narrow your focus on the Governing Board to be an advocate for
that area.

Link role areas include:
- Safeguarding
- Pupil Premium
- SEND,
- Curriculum & Enrichment
- STEM, Careers & Digital
- Recruitment, Diversity, Workload and Wellbeing
- Parental Engagement Marketing & Communications
- Risk & Compliance

What support is available to Governors:

- School Clerk – Your Clerk is your first port of call for assistance/guidance.

- Central Governance Team – The central Governance team is staffed with Governance
Professionals and other staff who can provide you with support, resources and training. You
can contact us any time via email to governance@tsatrust.org.uk.

- Trust resources and training – The Trust has a huge number of training videos, visits forms,
example questions and other resources that you can use to support your CPD.

- Governor Hub Knowledge – We subscribe to Governor Hub Knowledge which is a website
providing access to an enormous number of resources specifically for school Governors.
Governors will be given their own access to this so you can utilise this at your own
discretion.

- Mentoring with one of our experienced governors from your academy board or another
local trust governor

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Source: UK Teaching Vacancies Service (teaching-vacancies.service.gov.uk). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.