School governor - time commitments/expectations

[pickledwillies]

Hello! Just wondering if there's any primary school governors here. I just had an interview for a governor role for a primary school, and it seemed like a bigger commitment than I was expecting - monthly 2-hour meetings (with work in between), plus termly visits to the school.

I'm guessing this is probably typical(?) but just though I'd ask about others' experiences. I'm very keen to do the role, but trying to be realistic about time commitments. I had thought that meetings would be termly/quarterly, instead of monthly!

Was it for a parent governor or co-opted governor role, or for a more specific role (financial for example)?

I do 1 meeting a month at the Primary and 1 hour a month at the linked Secondary, plus I sit on one sub commitee that sits termly.
I can do more if I want to

@AzureSheep Not a parent governor, no. It's a co-opted governor role.

I’m a primary school co- opted Governor and my local authority has tried to be realistic with the role to encourage more younger people to apply. We meet in school termly for full governors and subcommittees meet between if necessary. Termly visits completed to view specific subject areas. I’m finding a little unconscious bias against working people but my employer is thankfully supportive so I can work flexibly to complete my governor role, as long as I dont ‘take the piss’.

If you do the role properly this is how long it will take I'm afraid.

Ah ok, so if you’ve been recruited for a particular reason you may find there might be slightly higher demands in your time but not likely to be much.

The main thing is you’re able to make the meetings (ours are 8 across the school year, so not quite 1 per month). There will be training to undertake (induction training for me was 3 x 2 hour online meetings, then safeguarding, asking strategic questions etc)

I generally go into school once a term (sometimes less) to do a monitoring visit with the subject lead I’ve been allocated. Depending on my availability I might spend an hour there or a whole morning.

You might get asked to sit in on interviews, though there’s no real expectation that you will. We also get invited to sports day, Christmas play, all that sort of stuff which is lovely.

it sounds like a lot but actually isn’t that bad in reality.

Usually a termly Full Gov meeting then termly meetings for the committees so also will depend on how many of the committees you sit on.
It’s such an interesting role and you have some pretty crucial decisions to make including recruitment of Head teachers should this arise while you’re there. There may be extra training evenings too especially for new governors so best to check this out too.

It’s been a while but when I was a primary school governor, there was a full governors meeting twice per term. Governors were also expected to be a member of at least one committee. The finance committee met twice per term and the other committees met once. You were also expected to visit the school at least once per term. Added to this were ad hoc commitments such as Appeals against Pupil Exclusion, Head Teacher performance appraisal, Staff disciplinarian, interview panel for key roles. So quite a lot!

Realistically that's the bare minimum to do the job. We have 3 FGB a year, around 7/8 committee meetings across 2 committees, (though you tend to join one not both), as well as additional should things arise that need specific attention
(For example at the moment, academisation). You also need to attend training, as well as going into school at least termly (all our govenors are linked to a subject area).

The number of meetings will depend on the governance structure the school has. Its very common to have between 3 and 5 full board meetings of 2 hour, then have 3 committee meetings on top of 2 hours each. Its also common to have a link role where you visit the school during school hours You will also need to do safeguarding training. You are really supposed to do other training each year too. Like a 2 hour online thing on a particular area.

We used to say between 4 and 8 hours a month (including the time to read all the papers)

I'm a parent governor so slightly different. We have a 2 hour LGB meeting every half term, then there are 2 sub committees which meet once a term and you're generally only on one of these. I'm also the Safeguarding Link Governor so have termly meetings with the Head which in theory are an hour but in practise take up most of a morning and means I'm part of the Trust Safeguarding group which meets once a term. I'm also in quite a bit of next week observing SATS, that's optional but classed as good practise so any governors that could make the time have.

Depending on what's happening in school and the agenda items I could spend anything from an hour to 4-5 hours reading through material prior to a meeting. Training is ongoing but August/September is always very time heavy as there's annual mandatory training that we need to do to be compliant.

I have the luxury of being able to give my time which I appreciate isn't the case for most people and I would guess is the biggest barrier to us being able to recruit new governors. I also get to do fun stuff with school, when the Head invites me it's always when they need extra adults (I'm a warm DBS'd body!) but it means I get to see what really goes on in school and when we're out and about on trips. So when we're discussing things as a board I can relate back to things like behaviour for example because as we're discussing the behaviour policy I can say well yes when I was doing XYZ I saw ABC which correlates with what we're being told.

I'm sorry that's so long but the short version is it's more work than you think but I absolutely love it!

This.

Plus you might be asked to take on an initiative. I had to research alternative school uniform and suppliers. It took far longer than you might think.

We were also expected in school for some assemblies, for learning walks, subject tracking progress and planning for Ofsted.

They all vary from the minimum of 3 Full board + 3 committee meetings to
to 16 depending on the school and a yearly board away day

School Governors: who are they and what do they do? - GfS (governorsforschools.org.uk) sign up for free to see if it is for you.
Any reference to the Governance handbook should be ignored now.