Governors' Impact Statement 2020/2021
Curriculum Committee – Chair: Matthew Kane
The Curriculum Committee works to ensure high standards of teaching and learning across the school. The committee is responsible for ensuring that the approaches used are having the right impact on the children’s learning and we do this by scrutinising children’s progress data to ensure no child falls behind. We compare ourselves to other schools locally and nationally to be sure our children are progressing as expected.
The membership of the Committee includes three Foundation governors, the Head Teacher and an associate governor. The governor champion for GDPR is a member of this Committee.
During 2020/21, Curriculum Committee continued to meet but remotely. Data was scrutinised at quarterly meetings although the limitations of it in a pandemic/remote learning situation were recognised. Notwithstanding, the School continues to perform well against national benchmarking data in reading, writing, maths and SPAG.
In the past year, we have also undertaken deep dives into subject areas with subject leads coming to the Committee to present their progress and ideas for improvement.
We are an outward facing school, actively learning from and sharing our good practice with other schools. We are constantly seeking new ideas to improve our practice and give our children a world-class education. The Committee is also responsible for reviewing the Pupil Premium objectives and funding, the school PE and Sports Premium funding and ensuring that we are GDPR compliant.
In the past year, an external audit of the School’s compliance with GDPR and data protection found full compliance against all but two of the 16 standards. An action plan is in place to take forward recommendations.
Resources Committee – Chair: Mark Rutherford
This is the committee where decisions are made about how the financial resources of the school will be spent in line with the school’s improvement and asset management plans.
It is a challenging role. There are always fewer resources than aspirations and it is often necessary to prioritise carefully and make difficult decisions in meeting the needs of the school in terms of the buildings, staffing and other resourcing needs. We work to ensure the best possible outcomes for our children in the short and medium term and to balance those priorities against the need to also make long term improvements to the school
The School’s Catholic ethos is also at the core of our decision making.
Last year we supported the following activities:
Managing the school’s budget and making sure we properly prioritised the resources available to maximise outcomes for our children.
Monitoring the performance of the school’s key suppliers of services including the Local Authority and the external cleaning and catering contractors.
Supporting the school and its Senior Leadership Team in managing the implications of the COVID pandemic. These initiatives included approving additional staffing to provide “catch up” support and ensuring that the school’s cleaning and catering provisions met the specific needs of the School arising from the pandemic.
Supporting the school and its Senior Leadership Team on its pathway to potentially becoming an academy and joining the proposed Diocesan multi-academy trust.
Continuing the improvement programme to the school buildings and environment. Last year this included approving the contract and associated funding for the roof lights to be replaced on the top corridor and carrying out a significant number of minor repairs and health and safety improvements.
Purchasing new Chrome books for the children. We also approved the purchase of further, new Chrome books for the children during the current school year.