Applying to be a school governor, what to put?

[Daffydills]

A position has come up at my children’s school to be a governor and I’ve decided to apply. The issue is I haven’t written a CV in 20 years and have no idea what type of thing they’re looking to hear about. I work in safeguarding and with vulnerable children so was going to mention that. I’ve recently done qualifications around SEN and autism. What else do I write about? Do I write about me personally or all about my experiences that might be helpful? It’s only 500 words, would it be appropriate to put bullet points with follow up info or should it be more of an essay type structure? Anyone who is a governor got anything I could include? I’ve recently had to reduce hours (again!) due to SEN child so this is the perfect type of volunteering where I can really help out without it impacting work/kids too much. I’d really love to be successful! Any advice or tips would be gratefully appreciated!

Governing bodies should consider skills and experience of existing members - and where there are gaps - when there are vacancies. Even though this is a parent gov position do they not say they are particularly interested in certain areas? If so, can you cover how you meet these?

You are writing this for both the fgb and also for the parents voting if it goes to election so I would suggest writing in succinct paragraphs, not bullets. It's a slightly stenage situation as parents don't necessarily vote for the sensible reasons someone would be a good governor. Stress your professional experience and qualifications in safeguarding, your professional qualifications and personal experience in SEN (if you are happy to out your child - but also don't make a big thing of the latter even if you do as you need to be clear you are not going in as a caped crusader, you want to show you are a good fit for a strategic role, not expecting to make operational changes), a line about giving back to the community and being passionate about all children receiving the best possible education.

If I were a chair of govs and knew that I had a keen wannabe gov with safeguarding experience I would do everything I could to find a slot for you as a co opted or other gov even if you ended up not being elected. Every fgb has a safeguarding gov and it's such an important role. Even if you currently have one you're still succession planning for what happens if/when they go!

Open an account with chatgpt and ask for suggested structure for application. As pp says, you have two audiences, parents( if parent gov role) and governing body.
make clear what you could bring to the role.

As an ex governor I'd say don't do it!! 🤣 The level of commitment is out of this world. I found the whole thing very frustrating and gave up after 2.5 years.

@NoOneKnowsWhoYouAre no don’t tell me that 😂 the application says 6 meetings a year? I was expecting that and then some additional work that I could do around kids and work on evenings and weekends? I was really interested! I’m assuming it’ll be a lot like the PTA where I was invited to join to help at events and now I’m stuck dealing with parent politics?

I had to go in at least twice a month, was involved in teacher interviews, dealing with safeguarding and helping write policies. It was a huge struggle and a lot took place within work hours so meant time off work. It was much more work than I was ever expecting!! Just my experience though so it could be different. Our governor meetings were bi-monthly but then each governor had to be in 2 sub committees on top.

Our chair of governors was a bit of a knob too so that didn't help!! He would make all decisions with the HT and then expect us to rubber stamp them, nope, not why I'm here, if I don't agree I'm going to want to discuss.

Being a governor is like many other things in life - the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it.

There will likely be 6 Full GB meetings a year and in addition, you might be asked to sit on a committee - Resources or Curriculum and Standards for example - and they'll be 3-6 meetings for that as well (although they are often shorter).
Ideally, you will also attend training pertinent to any responsibility you take on. A lot of this is now online since Covid so easier to access. Also, you will want to go into school sometimes to see how things work in practice.
There will be paperwork to read before the meetings (you should get this at least a week before the meeting)
I've been a school governor on and off for about 30 years and I find it very rewarding. It challenges my brain and I enjoy the people I work with - fellow governors and school staff. It's such an important role.

Good luck OP :)

Be very sure you can commit the time. I'm a governor in an independent school so it might be a bit different but I go to on average 4 meetings a term, at least a couple of other visits during school hours, I sometimes attend evening events (optional apart from meetings) and do a lot of paperwork. Every meeting has a lot of reports to read first, every visit I make needs a report writing afterwards, if you have to deal with a serious complaint or disciplinary that can suddenly take hours. There are training webinars to go to too.

It is extremely rewarding, but I have a great chair, head, clerk and governor colleagues.

Wow that's a lot! We have 3 fgb meetings per year and 3 sub-committee meetings (for each committee), per year.

I work FT and was worried it would be too much but actually it's fine - the sub-committee meetings we do online. There are other ad hoc events and correspondence - and governor walk-arounds but it's a totally different environment to my day job so I quite enjoy that!