Governance NewsletterHeadteacher & Business Manager Edition

Dear all, 

Welcome back to the start of this new academic year.  I hope that you managed to get some time away and enjoyed the summer. 

Last year this start of term newsletter got some positive feedback.  A number of you shared that you found it a really helpful checklist.  I have therefore kept the format the same, but there are a few tweaks to respond to a number of changes the DfE have made, and also a number of new, hopefully positive initiatives to tell you about. 

As we start a new year let us also reflect on the last 12 months, Last year was another incredibly positive year for governance with it being strongly recognised throughout our 10 Ofsted Inspections, and also through the DfE funded external review of governance that determined  "we have a strong bedrock of governance within our trust", "strong stakeholder engagement and participation",  and governance volunteers who are "committed, knowledgeable in a range of relevant fields, and highly skilled".  You through your leadership and management responsibilities as Headteachers, BOM's & SBM's are at the forefront of our ongoing governance success so thank you for all that you do to keep us not only compliant but also leading the way with a maturing model of best practice. 

Being a governance volunteer is not only a rewarding opportunity to continue to help young people in our local communities, it is also a fantastic opportunity to gain new and transferable skills to support your professional development.  It is also a great opportunity to network with like-minded other professionals and build wider networks.    If you are interested in volunteering to become a governor or trustee, either inside or outside of our trust, then please do get in touch and I can help introduce you to some key contacts.  Colleagues from the educational sector are always highly prized by schools and MAT's, and so you will not be short of opportunities!

If you have any questions, need anything clarifying, or want to provide some feedback on the usefulness (or not) of this newsletter then please don't hesitate to get in touch. 

Best wishes, 

Alison

Earlier in the year we shared the details of the Nova Transformational Awards, the criteria and methods for your entries.  We also trained up your roving reporting Press Teams so that you could capture and chart your activities in video form so that we can create a celebratory video that we would like to show at our awards event which is being held in the Senate Chamber of The University of Nottingham, on the evening of Thursday 30th November 2023 and will start at 5.30pm.  We are delighted to be able to announce that our award host for the evening is Geeta Pendse, broadcasting current affairs journalist and presenter.  We are looking forward to celebrating with you, on what we already know will be a memorable evening.  Hopefully, the first of many events where we will celebrate together as we chart our journey to becoming transformational.  

Please be aware that your entries need to be in by Monday 2 October 2023!  To remind yourself of the award scheme and entry process please click here. 

On your LGB agenda for September you will find that the Nova Transformational Awards is an agenda item.  Please talk to your LGB about the purpose of the awards, and also about the entries that you will be making.  You will shortly be receiving formal invitations for the event.  Within your allocation we would like you to reserve two tickets for your LGB - one for your Chair and one for another governor from the LGB.  If your Chair is unable to attend then this can be reallocated to another governor too.   The remaining tickets are to be used at your discretion to invite a range of staff to attend with you as representatives of the school staff body. 

 

So lets start with a brief recap of the precise responsibilities of a Headteacher in relation to governance. 

Headteachers must:

• welcome the role of effective governance, including accepting responsibility for it
• ensure staff understand their professional responsibilities and are held to account
• work within the required regulatory frameworks and meets all statutory duties
• maintain positive working relationships with fellow trust professionals
• present a coherent and accurate account of performance
• support the shared trust ethos and actively promote the ethos and the vision
• develop and sustain effective stakeholder partnerships with staff, pupils, parents and wider stakeholders

and BOMs/SBMs have responsibility to:

• ensure effective administrative support including the minuting of meetings 
• provide advice to the governing body on governance, constitutional and procedural matters
• ensure the governing body is properly constituted (2 parent governors and 1 staff governor) and elections managed in line with trust procedures 
• manage governance information effectively in accordance with legal and trust requirements           
• ensure the adoption and implementation of all trust policies
• contribute to the recruitment, induction and training of governors
• maintain a register of governor pecuniary interests        
• maintain a record of training and maintain governor meeting attendance records     
• ensure that statutorily required information is available on the school website and is kept up-to-date
• convene and clerk any statutory appeal committees/panels i.e. exclusions
• assist the Company Secretary and Chief Financial Officer with the preparation of information for final accounts and the auditors

We support you and your governors to achieve your local responsibilities by providing:

• Advice, guidance, sign-posting, policy and codes of practice to frame what you need to do and by when
• Access to GovernorHub. A platform which helps you to manage your documents and reporting requirements efficiently and securely
• Online access to supporting tools such as the Nova policy portal, the SIF/SEF, SCOAPS, skills audits and the statutory website page developed to make compliance easier for you to achieve
• Trust policies, codes of practice, terms of reference all designed to promote best practice and to shield you in the event of any challenge

We actively promote and support governance development across all those involved in governance – Headteachers, BOM’s/SBM’s, Governors, Trustees & Members by providing:

• access to The Key for Governors
• access to The National Governors Association (NGA)
• access to NGA Learning Link
• access to in house training, training videos, newsletters, promotion of webinars, podcasts, induction sessions
• provision of targeted reading materials, guidance
• provision of tailored trust checklists, template agenda’s or letters, guidance and codes
• hosting of Trust Governance Network events – two way sharing of information

We built an internal Skills Audit system that you control access to - giving you the data at your fingertips

Trust documents are provided via the Nova Gateway Policy Portal to give additional guidance and support to those with responsibility for governing. 

• Code of Practice for Link Governors
• Electing Parent Governors
• Electing the Chair/Vice Chair
• Recruiting Trustees & Governors
• Appointment checklist and appointment letter
• Governor leaver checklist
• Role of the LGB Chair
• TOR for LGB's
• Trustees & Governors Induction Booklet
• Template reports and meeting agendas

We provide monthly governance newsletters intended to keep you, and your governors updated, informed and knowledgeable.

We support with governance recruitment, and any issues as they arise. 

Elections

The September meeting is when you need to ensure that your board runs a nomination and election process for a Chair and Vice Chair for the new academic year.  Just a reminder that the cap for Chairs is a maximum of 6 years, so remember to check to make sure those standing are still eligible.  

Please remember that once your Chair is appointed, you must update ‘Get Information About Schools’ within 10 days,  update the statutory information page of your website, and also update GovernorHub to reflect any changes in your constitution, including start and end dates. 

Link Governors

Make sure, with your Chair, that Link Governors are appointed at the September meeting.  You must have a link governor for:

• Safeguarding
• SEND 
• Careers (Secondary Only)
• Curriculum 
• Governor Development

Once appointed please remember to update GovernorHub to reflect the changes in responsibility.  This also allows our trustees to make contact with the correct link governors.   Also please remember you need to update the information on your website - Statutory Information - School Governor Information. 

Template Agendas

Template agendas for the year are provided in the Resources section of GovernorHub.  Click here. 

You will see that the agenda's have been revamped for this year.   The agenda now recommends the amount of time that should be allocated to each section, and the action required by governors.  Governors should be scrutinising the information they have access to in order to arrive at a decision about how assured they are.   Item 6 now asks that the Chair of the Board sum up for the minute taker the summation of the local boards scrutiny of the academy so that it can be shared with trustees post meeting. 

Please note that items should not be removed from the agenda  - and it is expected that all sections are reported against. We wish to emphasise this point because via the work of our internal auditors, they have occasionally found that some schools have removed items, or have not reported against them as they should.  This is particularly prevalent for items such as Health & Safety and Risk Registers.  Please speak to the appropriate member of the Central Team if you need any further support on knowing what it is that you should be sharing with your LGBs.    Removing items, or incorrect reporting puts the whole compliance framework of the trust at risk, as well as creating potentially serious implications at a school level for leaders.   

Declarations of interest

Make sure governors complete their declarations of interest promptly on GovernorHub.  As is usual, make sure they do not take part in any governance activities (including meetings) before their declaration is made.

Remember you will need to run the report from GovernorHub to produce your consolidated spreadsheet of declarations of interest, and will need to manually upload this to your Statutory Information page on your website.

As last year,  we continue to encourage you to do this periodically throughout the year (or whenever someone changes their declaration, or a new Governor is appointed) and that you consider doing this around the time of your LGB meetings as this acts as a natural and regular prompt. 

Please note their declarations of interest need to be made in this academic year i.e. after 1 September. 

 

General Confirmations

Also, in GovernorHub please make sure all your governors confirm – before they attend the September meeting that they have:

• Read and understood the latest version of Keeping Children Safe In Education
• Agreed to abide by our Code of Conduct
• Declared that they are eligible to be a governors

You can download reports from within GovernorHub to check who has completed this activity by going to the About tab and then choosing Downloads. 

Please note that these confirmations need to be made in this academic year i.e. after 1 September. 

 

Attendance Record At Meetings Over the Last Academic Year, Complaints Received During the Preceding School Year and Exams and Assessment

As one year starts you will need to upload your governors attendance record for last years LGB meetings.  This gets uploaded to the statutory area of your website as part of the School Governor Information. 

The number of school complaints for 2022-23 needs adding to statutory area too and this can be found in the Academy Policies section just below the Complaints Policy tab. 

Other areas may also need reviewing and updating, for instance:

• the Exams and Assessment section
• making sure your latest Ofsted Report is linked to your website
• updating contact names for the new academic year
• SEND Report
• Accessibility Plan
• Equality Objectives
• Careers Programme

Finding time in September to check your website, to make sure you are up-to-date is good use of time and allows you to confidently inform your LGB at the September meeting that your school is compliant. 

Whilst there is no statutory requirement for how often governors should refresh their safeguarding training, KCSIE does say it should be 'regularly updated'.  If you have no record of a Governor having undertaken Safeguarding training in the last two years then please work with your Chair to make sure this happens.   Remember you should be checking (with your Governor for Governor Development), your governors training record on a regular basis to make sure your board has the knowledge and experience that they, and you need!

There are a few ways that governors can undertake appropriate Safeguarding training.  You could invite Governors to attend a Safeguarding Training Session in school, or you could ask them to undertake safeguarding training via The National College. 

Since last year The Key have now produced an online Safeguarding course.  This may be one of your easiest options as governors should now be comfortable with finding their way around GovernorHub/The Key.  The link you will need to send them can be found by clicking here. 

 

A number of your governors should also be Safer Recruitment trained.  To access this training please send governors this link - click here. 

 

The Key also provide Safeguarding Link Governor training which you can send to governors via this link - click here. 

 

If as Headteachers or BOMs/SBMs you have concerns about the skills and knowledge across your LGB then your first conversation should be with the Chair of the LGB to discuss the steps that you need to take, to further develop the board.  If you need any additional trust  support with these conversations please do get in contact with me so that I can help and support.

There is a view in the education and governance sector that stakeholder engagement is now the fourth governance core function.  In part this is because on pages 14 and 20 of the Governance Handbook the  DfE spell out that boards have a responsibility to make sure that trusts/schools have an effective strategy for engaging meaningfully with key stakeholders. 

If you are looking for ways in which to get your LGB more involved with your Stakeholder Engagement work then the following links offer some ideas/opportunities that you may wish to explore.

Tips to boost engagement with parents and other stakeholders

Engaging stakeholders: the governing board’s role - listen to the NGA Webinar

There is great interest in our sector about the work we have collectively started at Nova, so the way we continue to strengthen this area of our work  is something we should all be proud of, and celebrate. 

Click here to read the Case Study that Edurio wrote about our work so far. 

Whilst you all should have access to the Edurio platform (if you find you don't then please let me know and I will arrange this), you and your governors can also access all the PDF reports (including the latest parent survey results) by clicking here. 

The survey dates for next year are all in the school improvement calendar that has been shared with you, but the dates are also provided below for you too.  You will note that we have a new survey for this year that we are running - Local Governance & School Leaders.  This survey will collect feedback to help us to continue to improve the efficiency of our local governance arrangements.   I will be sending out the links to this survey via GovernorHub and so it should not create any additional workload for you - albeit there will be a further survey to analyse, and action plan against (with your LGB Chair) when the results are available. 

• Local Governance & School Leaders: 13 November 2023 – 1 December 2023
• Staff Working Conditions & Wellbeing Survey: 8 – 26 January 2024
• Pupil Learning Experiences & Wellbeing Survey: 22 April – 17 May 2024
• Parent Survey: 17 June – 19 July 2024

New for 2023 is the DfE's encouragement for us to publish board diversity data.

Please note this is not yet a statutory requirement.

Diversity data refers to information on any of the 9 protected characteristics. 

The DfE hopes that collecting and publishing this data it will help  boards to be more reflective of the community they serve. 

What diversity data should we collect and publish?

There aren't any requirements on this, so it is up to the trust to decide on what information on any of the 9 protected characteristics it will collect and publish. 

Governors can opt out of sharing diversity information at any time. This includes data that has already been published.

If governors:  

• Wish to withdraw their information after publication, they should let their chair or clerk know
• Have filled out their information on GovernorHub (see below) and wish to remove it, see how to do this by clicking here.

We must make sure that individuals cannot be identified and so the DfE have said that to prevent this we can:

1. omit categories where individuals would be easily identified, for example if there's only 1 person that would answer differently to others 
2. as a trust we can collate information from all our schools so that information comes from a wider source

As a trust we will be taking option 2. 

Please support us by encouraging your Governors to enter their diversity data on GovernorHub in their personal profile, I recommend that you do this as apart of the start of new academic year tasks to complete.  It governors are concerned about whether they will be identiable then please feel free to share this link with them which explains how GovernorHub will process their data.  Privacy | GovernorHub Help Centre

The GovernorHub team are working behind the scenes to develop their systems to allow a safe and anonymised report to be run.  When this function is available we will centrally publish the report on all our websites - thus removing the need for any extra effort or workload on your part - with the exception of the usual chasing!

Thank you in advance for your support with this additional task. 

 

The following are tasks that must be completed at least annually.  We would recommend that you undertake these activities as early as possible in the first-half of the Autumn term and  certainly no later than December.   The Key have a handy governing board planner for academies which contains all the key dates and deadlines for the sector.  To download and tailor this planner to your school please click here. 

Skills Audit

You must ensure governors complete an annual skills audit and make the findings of this available to your Chair.  To help support you with this activity Peter Armann built an in-house skills audit system for schools.  The link to send to your governors so that they can complete the skills audit is provided below .  Within the Nova Governors Portal on the Gateway you (BOM/SBMs & HTs) have been provided with a dashboard so that you can analyse your own data and share it with your Chair and wider LGB [image of where to find the Skills Audit dashboard provided below].  

www.novagateway.co.uk/skills

Once you have that consolidated skills audit  then you should work with your Chair to make sure you identify gaps in skills/experience on your board that need addressing by either recruitment or training

Work with your  Chair to make sure there is a succession plan in place for key individuals i.e. the Chair or Vice-Chair

Pupil Premium Spending  Report

You must publish (on your website - Statutory Information section) your PP Spending Strategy and report this to your governing board.   This needs to happen before the end of December 2024 so must be reported to either of your Autumn LGB meetings and minuted to reflect that this has happened. 

For further support or guidance about what you need to do as the Headteacher follow this link:

Click Here

Looked After Children (LAC)

At your September or November meeting (depending when you previously provided your annual LAC report to the LGB) you must report to your LGB on how you support looked-after children.  Use The Key's template to help you.

 Click Here

First things first.  LGB meetings should take no longer than 90 minutes. 

All reports and papers to your LGB must be circulated at least 5 working days prior to the meeting to allow governors the opportunity to read all the documents and come armed with questions. 

The normal expectation is that there should  be no need for Headteachers to take governors through their Headteachers report, or present at length.    Meetings are  for your governors to scrutinise, triangulate and to seek the assurances they need.  

With this in mind from this September the agenda template is changing.  Please can you help by drawing this to the attention of your Chair and other governors.  The new template agenda sets out who the lead speaker is for each item and the action required by governors. 

Policies

The education team worked really hard at the end of last academic year to get all of their policies updated (where required) and approved by trustees.  I did email you about these on the 18th July but as a reminder the policies that have been approved are:

Policies with changes for 2023-24 approved by trustees:

• Early Careers Teachers
• Children with health needs who cannot attend school
• Early Years Foundation Stage
• Relationship & Sex Education Primary
• Relationship & Sex Education Secondary
• Concerns & Complaints Policy
• Special Educational Needs
• Supporting pupils with medical conditions

Policies with no changes for 2023-24 but approved for continued use:

• Careers Guidance Provider Access
• Examinations Contingency Plan
• Non-examination assessment
• Accessibility Plan

Policies approved by trustees over the summer break and emailed out to you by Ryan Hawley on 18 June 2023. 

• Admissions Arrangements 2025-26
• Secondary Behaviour Policy
• Suspension & Permanent Exclusion Policy

Child Protection Policy – trustees approved our continued use of local authority versions from September 2023 when made available.

As a number of the above policies need tailoring to be school specific you will start to receive automated reminders of this via email.  These reminders only stop once your school policy has been uploaded to the Policy Gateway.   Please note they do need to be uploaded in PDF format for the system to recognise their existence. 

Although we emailed you the policies at the end of last academic year please download the templates for school use from the policy portal to ensure that you have the latest version.  The reason for this is because the DfE were in contact over the summer and asked us to make a minor change to our policies.  This very minor change is that we have now made sure all our 'statutory policies' have an expiry date.  If you have already used a template sent out at the end of last academic year, then please do not start again.  Please simply overwrite where it currently says 'Date of Review' and change this to Date of Expiry.  You can check on the expiry date that you should enter by looking at what the template now says on the policy portal.  

You will also need to take to your LGB you new action plans for employee/parent and pupil engagement, and will need to upload these new plans to the Policy Gateway too.

Other procedures/plans my also need updating at a school level and re-uploading to the  policy portal for example:

• does your Social Media Policy and Social Media Protocols need updating to reflect any staffing or other changes?
• does your School Emergency Plan need updating?

Have a check on your website to make sure that you haven't uploaded additional policies/procedures that are now out-of-date.  Remember you only need to publish those documents that are required within the statutory information tab.  If you, as a school, decide to upload additional documents then you need to make sure that you continually review these so that they are relevant and current. 

Link Visits

Please continue to actively promote and oganise termly link visits for Link Governors, and make sure they report back to the full governing board.   This is a critical element of their scrutiny and assurance triangulation activities.    Make Link Governors aware that they can access in-house training videos for each of their areas via the following link Click Here. The agenda for each LGB meeting has been strengthened in this regard to ensure that governors understand how key this aspect of their role is. 

Feedback from Governors to the CEO/Trustees

We have retained this opportunity in your meetings for your governors to ask questions or feedback to the CEO/Trustees.  Please encourage them to make use of this opportunity.  Following the external review of governance we have also added in a requirement for the Chair of each LGB to provide a summation of the local boards scrutiny of the academy which should be minuted and also shared post meeting with trustees. Following the meeting please can you take responsibility for getting in touch with me to let me know the feedback/questions post meeting, and also the summation of the local boards scrutiny so that we can share this with trustees.  A brief email will be adequate. 

This new measure will provide additional clarity around oversight and assurance by building it in much more explicitly into the way governors and trustees feed into one another, and will show the evaluative impact of their decision making, helping to identify learning.   To further strengthen this governor-trustee relationship we are making a change to the Chair Network Meetings - detailed below. 

Chair Network Meetings

Over the last couple of years we have tended to see the same faces at our Chair Network Meetings which has been great for building two-way relationships with the Chair's of a number of our schools, and passing on important messages about the trust and the work of trustees.  However, for those schools for whom the Chair has not attended their has been a real gap in communication.  We are therefore opening up the opportunity for any governor to now attend these meetings and as such the meetings have been rebranded and will now be known as Trust Governance Network Meetings.   Please can you reinforce this message to your local governing board, and encourage attendance where possible.