Governance NewsletterSeptember 2023

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. 

As we start a new year let us also reflect on the last 12 months.   Last year was another incredibly positive year for trust 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".  Thank you once again for the part you played in our success last and for what we know you will do once again this year.  The voluntary contribution you make to our organisation is immense and invaluable. 

Throughout the year if you have any questions, need anything clarifying, or want to provide some feedback on the usefulness (or not) of these newsletters then please don't hesitate to get in touch via aingram@novaeducationtrust.net

Best wishes, 

Alison

 

Alison Ingram

Director of Strategy & Engagement

One of the aspects the external review of governance asked us to consider bringing greater clarity to, is the structure around how governors, trustees, headteachers and executives all work together.  I have prepared this schematic (below) which I hope will be a helpful addition to explain who does what, and who holds who to account. 

For further clarity about specific responsibilities please refer to our Scheme of Governance Delegation which is published on the Nova Website, and each School Website (underneath the Statutory Information tab). 

Earlier in the year we shared the details of the Nova Transformational Awards, the criteria and methods for school entries.  We also professionally trained up pupil roving reporting Press Teams in our schools so that they could capture and chart the schools activities in video form.  The idea being 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 our schools, 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.  

Schools need to submit entries 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 Headteacher about the purpose of the awards, and also about the entries that the school will be making.  There will be a couple of tickets allocated to the LGB to allow governing board representation at the event, and further information on this will come via your Headteacher in due course. 

As you may be aware Steve Orton leaves us later this month.  As a trust we will be taking the opportunity, over the next few weeks, to properly thank him for his amazing service to the trust over the last few years.  We are however delighted to let you know that we appointed an outstanding CFO on the last day of term.  Michael Davies started earlier this week and is really looking forward to meeting you in person over the coming months.  Please see a little bit about him below.

 

Michael Davies

Michael is an experienced CFO, being the current Finance and Operations Director (designated CFO) at the Greater Nottingham Education Trust based out of Carlton le Willows Academy, where he has been for the last 12 years. Most recently, Michael has delivered an £11m new build project. Prior to joining the education sector, Michael spent a decade in the private sector managing the finances and taxation for hundreds of small and medium sized businesses.

Michael is a chartered accountant through the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). Michael is also a qualified accounting technician and holds the Certificate in School Business Management.

 

 

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 on your Governor Training record log (within GovernorHub) of having undertaken Safeguarding training in the last two years then please work with your school to make sure you receive training.   

There are a few ways that governors can undertake appropriate Safeguarding training.  You could attend a Safeguarding Training Session in school, or you could 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 you will be very familiar by now with how to find your way around The Key. 

Safeguarding for governance - click 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

 

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 you as a governing board can get 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. 

To access all the PDF reports  from last year - including the latest parent survey results please click here. 

The survey dates for next year are provided below.  You will note that we are also running a new Edurio survey this year, and it is one that directly involves you!  The Local Governance & School Leaders survey will run in November and will provide us with information that will help us to improve the efficiency of our local governance arrangements, based upon your feedback.    When the opportunity arises I hope that you will take the opportunity to let us have your views. 

• 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:

• omit categories where individuals would be easily identified, for example if there's only 1 person that would answer differently to others 
• 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.   We will also be using the GovernorHub platform to collect, analyse and publish our data. 

 If you have any concerns about how GovernorHub will process your data please click here.  

 

On the LGB agenda's for this year we have retained that opportunity for you to ask questions, or provide feedback to the CEO/Trustees.  To continue to strengthen those connections between the layers of governance we have added in a requirement for the Chairs to provide a summation of the local boards scrutiny at the end of each meeting.  This recommendation came from the DfE Funded NLG External  Review of Governance that was conducted in the summer term.    

This new measure will provide additional clarity around local governance oversight and assurance by identifying in a much more transparent way a formal mechanism for governors and trustees to share invaluable information about how the schools within the trust are being locally governed.  It will also provide local governors with an additional mechanism to evidence the evaluative impact of  their decision making, thereby helping to further identify any local/trust wide learning needs.   

To further strengthen this governor-trustee and trust relationship we are making a change to the Chair Network Meetings for 2023-24.  Chair Network Meetings will now be replaced with Trust Governance Network Meetings, and all governors are welcomed and encouraged to attend.  These are great opportunities for you to find out about successes, challenges and changes that we are making.  It is also an opportunity to meet other governors and trustees to build a wider network of contacts. 

The dates for this year are:

• 10 October 2023, 4.15pm - 5.00pm
• 18 January 2024, 4.15pm - 5.00pm
• 8 May 2024, 4.15pm - 5.00pm
• 16 July 2024, 4.15pm - 5.00pm

The meetings are all held via Teams and you can access the meeting links in a variety of ways.  You can either use the calendar feature in GovernorHub to find the appointment, open it and click the join link.  Or you can go to the home page of 'Resources for Nova' and  click the correct link in the posting that has been made on the right hand side of the screen (see image below). 

 

Priority 1: It is an easy first priority - we promise!

The trust and each of its schools must publish a register of relevant business and pecuniary interests of any members, trustees, local governors and senior employees.  This is to make sure that organisations are transparent and open. 

The register must be kept up-to-date at all times and this requirement is set out in the Academy Trust Handbook. 

To help our schools manage this process, and reduce their workload, we make use of the online facility available to us on GovernorHub. 

We appreciate that your details may not have changed since last year but our auditors will be checking to make sure that all Trustees and Governors have reconfirmed their declarations this academic year - so after 1st September 2023.

To complete your declarations click on your profile and follow the instructions given below. 

Whilst in this tab please also scroll down and confirm the items listed under the General Confirmations. 

If you need any guidance about what counts as an interest then please click here. 

 

Please take the opportunity to consider adding your diversity data into GovernorHub. 

To do this click on your name (top right hand corner of GovernorHub). 

Then scroll down past your address, past governor information and onto personal information. 

When you click fill personal information you will be provided with additional information to help you make a decision as to whether you want to input your information.  

Further information has been provided for you in this newsletter about why we are now asking you to consider completing these fields. 

 

 

For those of  you who have many years of governance volunteering under your belt you will be well aware that it is an annual requirement that Skills Audits are undertaken. 

To help our schools manage this process more easily our internal developers have designed an in-house system that will now take all the admin burden out of the system, and give them and your Chair the tools to analyse  that data for sharing with your wider board. 

Please help your schools to consolidate this data quickly by  clicking here to complete your Skills Audit. 

You will need to add your name and select your school. 

Your schools need you to receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection (including online) training at induction, which then must be regularly updated.   They also need to have a record of this. 

Please help your schools to manage this process by undertaking any training they ask you to do.  

A  new version of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) comes into force on 1 September. 

By clicking here you can find out what has changed and what your governing boards needs to do.  You will be asked within the confirmation section of Governorhub to confirm for the record that you have read and understood this document.