Last night I chaired the first School Improvement Committee (SIC) of this term. We generally only have one SIC per term, but this was an additional meeting planned when a number of actions arose from the last full Governing Body meeting in December.

As is normal in SIC meetings, last night’s meeting panned out into a really constructive and worthwhile discussion around a few key subject areas. In a change to the norm (without the old staff room available) we held the meeting in Mrs Ashcroft’s Year 2 classroom – a good opportunity for Governors to soak up the atmosphere and conditions of the new build!  I have to report that although the new yellow chairs looked small, they were actually surprisingly comfortable! Impressively the wall displays of the Year 2 work on their China project were an excellent backdrop to the meeting, and I feel typical of how classes have moved in and made their new classrooms real learning environments in the space of a couple of weeks.

The first main topic of discussion for the committee was a review of some recent updates to three school policies – our Anti-Bullying Policy, our Complaints Policy and the staff Grievance Policy. After discussion and some agreement to make some further tweaks, all three policies were approved. We also discussed how we share policies with parents, this discussion led to an agreement to publish our set of Safeguarding Policies (including the updated Anti-Bullying ad Complaints Policies) to the school website. Keep an eye out for these in the near future!

The second main topic of discussion was an initial conversation of the options potentially open to the school the direction we want to take for the best of the school around current Government Policy which is dictating a move away from traditional model of single school provision of service. Essentially schools are being encouraged to work together with similar schools to share resources and best practice. Some of you may have seen changes local High Schools have made recently. As a Governing Body we need to understand the best options for our school, and steer in the right direction. As our options, opportunities and plans become clearer I will of course let you know appropriately….probably through this blog!

As ever with SIC meetings……….time seemed to fly by, but before we closed we squeezed in a quick update on the new building. Feedback from staff on the committee thankfully reported the children were really enjoying being in the new building and exploring all its new features. I guess our challenge is to keep them as engaged until September…when they will have another new (well refurbished) building to admire!

Adding to the comfort of our new surroundings, I did hopefully set a new precedent in this SIC [blatantly throwing a challenge to other Governors]. We had donuts to eat…and yeap we ate them! Hopefully we will have flapjack next meeting

David Smart, Chair of the Governing Body, Gildersome Primary School.

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