new parent governor

[ellaflo]

i have just become a parent governor and would love to hear other peoples experiences and what peoples expectations have been of you (and how to live up to them!)

Its harder work than I'd thought tbh.
In addition to the main governing body meeting I'm also on two committees that meet twice a term so that's quite a lot of time investment just in meetings. You need to be able to understand all the documents they send out too and that is rather hard when you've no background in education. eg what's a school improvement plan, what do all these SAT results actually mean?
The course for new governors is helpful in understanding your role and I've also done some additional ones specific to the committees I'm on which have really helped (they're all free)
I like knowing what's going on and it has made me more passionate about the school and what we're trying to do.

The one expectation that you need to get firmly out of your mind is that you are there to represent parents. You are not, you are there as a representative parent and as such you should not be presenting the GB with all the current parent grievances. There is a clear mechanism for that and it is through the complaints process of the school. It is often quite difficult if you are part of playground discussions to not get dragged in to "you need to take this to the governors" type conversations but you need to.
Get as much training as you can, as this will help you to understand all the things that come up in meetings. What I would also say is that for the first year you are in a very select position, you can ask all the "daft" questions that actually are the most important questions, like why are we doing that. Believe me some others around the table will want to ask the same question but feel embarrassed to do so.
The other issue that will come up is one of confidentiality, there will be things that are confidential which will be discussed and you do need to understand that they cannot be discussed outside of the GB. Most GBs use a system of having two parts to the meeting, one that is in theory open to all and one bit that is confidential items. You need to establish with the Chair exactly what the system is on your GB.

I've posted this before and er, here it is again:-

Being a Governor varies slightly from school to school. The main thing is ?time and commitment?. You should think of the Governor meetings as meetings that you must attend and arrange your social/work life around them. You should attend the training sessions that your Local Authority provides.

Best bits: Being involved with the school and making a contribution. Watching and learning how others deal with and solve problems. Gaining in self confidence and speaking up in meetings.

Worst bits: You must think of the meeting as mandatory and sometimes one can get involved with sacking/redundancies and discipline matters.

School Governors are the biggest volunteer organisation in the UK. We estimate that it takes up about 35hrs per year although, of course, it depends on how involved you want to be.

Governors deal with Budgets, Policies, Targets and things which are 'a step away' from the 'day to day' running of the school.
Any question like 'My child doesn't ... isn't ... can't ...' is not for a Governors meeting.

School Governors do not run the school; they are there to take an overview and see that it delivers.

Some useful sites: ukgovernors and Governor Line and Being a school Governor

I?m sure you can Google ?being a school governor? yourself but:-

The Role of a School Governor

1 To Provide a Strategic View
2 To Act as a ?Critical Friend?
3 To Ensure Accountability

Good Luck

Marking my place. I was asked to be governor at DD's school today so I'm scouring the internet to find out what it involves. I knew MN would have some good answers.

I recently became a parent governor too - I would say that the estimate of 35 hrs per year is rather low so far But I have found the training through the LEA to be really good and useful (Induction for governors especially useful), going to the committee meetings helps you to find out much more about what is going on - as they then tend to present things to the main governing body meeting for approval and you can miss out on the thrashing out of details part IMHO.

You gets rather a lot of paperwork, some with lots of new jargon to get your head around.

I am finding it interesting, and the more I get involved, the more I am asked to get involved IYKWIM. Lovely when you see positive improvements happening and you feel like part of the team ( a little, at least)

bilblio - Jolly good ? go for it.
A school needs good people who are involved.

I'm on maternity leave at the moment so I've been making the most of being able to get involved. Luckily DS is a dream child so I've been able to help out in school and DS has just slept in a corner of the classroom. I'll not be able to help as much when I'm back in school, so this will be a great way to still be involved and contribute.

I laughed at the "being representative of the parents" though. I hope I'm not. Education wise I'm definitely not. It's a small community school on an ex-council estate. Lots of parents won't send their children there for this reason alone. They'd prefer to send their children to the other local schools which all have worse OFSTED reports.

Just adding another thing to the excellent posts already.

You should be prepared to be visiting the school quite a bit. In our school we are linked with a year group (2 classes for my year), and we are expected to visit each of those classes every half term. We have a curriculum area in focus each half term and we visit for one of those lessons. We also go to class assemblies, special assemblies, sports day, Christmas lunch. I have also done learning walks and visits to look at particular aspects of the school. Each of these visits needs to be written up into a Governor Visit Report.

Sometimes I feel like I spend my whole life there! But it does mean that the governors feel that they are really part of the school's life, and that we know the school, the staff and the children well. It also means that when the 'critical friend' bit of our remit means we have to be critical, we know whereof we speak.

It's a great thing to do, go for it.