Is anyone a parent governor?

[OhComeOnRon]

Just that really? My daughter has just started reception and have received a letter that they have vacancies for new parent governors.
Has anyone done this? What does it entail? And how much of a time commitment is it usually?
I'm new to the school thing but would love to get involved. I am going to request further info but thought some mn's might have some experience and knowledge to share

Really depends on the school and the other governors.

I was a PG for about a year. Really couldn't stick it at all. Myself and the other PGs didn't really have any power or real input. Every governors meeting was as if it had been stitched up by the other governors in advance and we were just there to have our heads patted when we did as we were told! The straw that broke the camel's back was when we'd been discussing a specific matter for about 2 hours and there was no consensus so it went to a vote - the vote went against the Head and LA governor, but then the LA governor said it had to go ahead anyway as that was LA policy - so basically a complete waste of 2 hours of my life as the head and LA governor already knew the outcome! I resigned at the end of that meeting! Ever since, it's been clear that subsequent PGs don't last long as it seems they're advertising a vacant post every few months.

I have been a parent Governor, it is very time consuming, involves a lot of responsibility but can be very rewarding. We had 12 standard meetings a year, but then there were other meetings and school visits. If you work PT or are SAHP you will be very popular as you will have more availability than some other governors.

During my time I was involved in making decisions on new school buildings, becoming an Academy, interviewing a new HT, sitting on exclusion panel.

Kazzy: you are describing a dysfunctional Governing Body. As a parent Governor, you don’t have power to do anything. Nor do a group of parent governors. They don’t act as a body of governors against the other governors or the Head. It really should never occur that a meeting lasts two hours on one topic! Maybe if it’s talking about academy status, but that should be a separate meeting. If the LA had a policy (about what??) then following it would depend on the legalities of not following it. There should always be an agenda paper setting out the issues on difficult matters and the policy issue should have been flagged - so a crap Chair really!

I do feel I need to stress that individual governors don’t have power. The LA doesn’t have power over a GB. If a GB decides it wants to do something that simply isn’t possible or legal it will have to row back. I would also suggest that all governors should be trained so they know exactly how a GB should run and challenge poor chairmanship. Training should give you a greater understanding of what you are there to do. I have never been on a GB that takes a vote. It is all about consensus and working together for the good of the school. If governors are not doing that, they are probably a failing GB.

I've been a parent governor for almost a year. It's been a lot more work than I expected, but I'm still enjoying the role. This is my way of supporting the school and giving back to society.

You need to 'work smart' and be firm about how much you can take on. On our induction course, the trainer said to avoid falling into the trap of thinking you must sign up/be guilt tripped into joining every committee.

And don't compare yourself with governors who are retired/work part time/SAH with school-aged children. Do the best you can with the time that you have.

I was a parent governor, and chair, for many years. It’s bloody hard work.

That sounds all wrong Kazzy. All governors are guided by the same 3 principles, namely clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction, providing support and challenge for the headteacher (accountability), and to oversee financial performance. No one governor has more authority than another and you certainly shouldn’t be discussing something for two hours!

Kazzy, what you describe is a governing board who are not clear what they should be doing and a headteacher who is seemingly intent on making sure that the GB remains a "rubber stamping" organisation. The idea that an LA Governor is also dictating LA policy to the rest of the governing board is very wrong, especially if your assertion of collusion with the headteacher is correct. Eventually a dis-functional governing board becomes a dis-functional school with the inevitable outcome of a school in crisis.
OP I would not want you to be put off by some of the issues raised here, most governing boards work well in harmony with the senior leadership team of the school. Yes it can be hard work and more work than you think but seeing the rewards in changes for the better in the school is what will always keep me excited to be a Chair of Governors.

Dysfunctional or dis-functional? Agree with admission though. Good schools have functional governing bodies.

If anyone is thinking about becoming a governor, I would watch the School programme that started last night on BBC2. It covers the many issues that schools are facing, and the tough decisions that have to be made, that you as a governor will be involved in.

Isn’t this a failing secondary though? Hopefully most primary governors won’t face these issues!

The Castle School is good and its progress 8 is above average. There’s a lot of stuff about financial concerns and making tough decisions. Worth watching on iPlayer.

Some good answers above, here's my view -

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.

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. You can expect about 2 meeting per term (one on a committee and one for the Full Governing Body meeting) leading to about 6 meetings of about 2hrs each per year.

I repeat, it varies slightly from school to school and it depends on how involved you want to be.

In all types of schools, governing bodies should have a strong focus on three core strategic functions:
a. Ensuring clarity of vision, ethos and strategic direction;
b. Holding the headteacher to account for the educational performance of the school and its pupils; and
c. Overseeing the financial performance of the school and making sure its money is well spent.

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.

Sometimes one can get involved with sacking, redundancies and discipline matters.

Some useful sites: The Governance Handbook and UK Governors Forum and Being a School Governor and Governors for Schools.

I enjoy it and I've learnt a lot. I like being involved with the school and making a contribution - watching and learning how others deal with and solve problems. I have gained in self-confidence and speaking up in meetings.

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

You can ask for child minding expenses!
Child care (or rather dependent care because they might be elderly) is an excellent reason to pay expenses.

Sadly, Bubbles, I don't agree. The school I'm involved in is a successful, leafy primary in a sought-after, leafy area. We are facing exactly the same issues as Castle, if on a much smaller scale. So are all the other local primaries I know. No money for basic staffing. No time for pastoral care. SEN needs exploding with less and less money to address them. Staff morale nosediving. Pupil behaviour deteriorating. Relationships with parents worsening because of all of the above. No money, no money, no money.

Brisklady I also do not agree with Bubbles that most primary school governors will not face the issues suggested, because they will over the next couple of years unless there is a substantial funding increase.
However I also think that I do not agree with you in that as governors we are now going to have to make some really difficult and unpopular decisions where the spending is exceeding the funding available. As a GB we need to "balance the books" despite how much the staff say there is nothing more to cut because there always is staff who constitute by far the biggest expenditure. When faced with the inevitable then a way will be found to make savings.

Oh, I agree that there are ways to save, admission. But, as in that meeting at Castle, making staff redundant, replacing experienced staff with NQTs, or asking them to do more work while simultaneously taking away their management money/time is not a pleasant experience, for SLT or governors.

I am vice chair at a large, leafy maintained primary and we are facing exactly the same issues.

Admission
Also Chair at a small rural primary with 4 classes, 4 teachers and 105 pupils with a teaching HT. Our next staff cut would be a class teacher so 3 classes instead of 4. Cue deteriorating teaching and learning, low staff morale, parent anxiety/complaint about the above changes. That is the situation now faced by many schools because many schools are primaries not secondaries and many are rural so shared resources less feasible. In our LA over 70% of schools are projected to be in deficit in year 3 of our 3 year finance/budget projections. This was not always the case. Are you saying that SLT/Govs are poorer at managing finance/budgets? Where would you expect to find some more 'savings'?

Hi JWIM, similar situation to you so v interested in your reply. How the devil are you able to fit 105 children into 3 classes without breaching infant class size regulations? We're nearing the point of needing to do something similarly drastic, but I can't see how it will work. Also fearful that taking such a step will decimate our new entrant numbers, leading to a downward spiral in funding. It's so bloody depressing.

Brisk the answer is we can't so deficit here we come. There are schools locally that are full and are in deficit so they can't even increase their pupil numbers to increase the per pupil element of their income.

Whilst I agree with Admission that Gov Bodies should run their schools with financial care, there comes a point where all the 'slack' in the budget has been pared away. With staffing being the most expensive line in the budget, cutting staff will help balance a budget. If I recall Admission is a Governor in a secondary environment so there may be more staff to make redundant, or not replace or replace with less expensive equivalents, but in a small Primary there is not. It is a teacher in a classroom.
Interestingly, one of the points of evidence at the Education Select Committee this week was the absence of any DfE work on what it takes to run a school. We have had our core 'lump sum' cut from £180k to £115k as a result of the ?fairer funding formula. That is not sufficient for the building to open safely, warm, with water, toilets and lights.

I knew my post would elicit some responses. I have been involved as a governor at 4 schools, 2 primary and 2 secondary and currently also involved in other schools to sort school finances out. To say more would probably out me.
I would expect most 3 year budgets to be in deficit in year 3 because if the budgeting has been done correctly, there will be continued increased staffing costs because of all the recent announcements on pay and pensions but there will be no extra funding to compensate. The trick is then how you look to bridge that gap, which over the last 10 years has been mainly achieved by funding increases that have happened. We now are in a very different scenario where there will be no or very little funding pots, like the pathetic £400M for “little extras” which means that balancing the budgets is by cutting the expenditure or increasing income.
The DfE have no information about the real “core” cost of schools because they know it will be not what they want to see. JWIM in setting a lump sum of £115K the DfE decided that figure as an average across all LAs to bring uniformity. I don’t believe for a second that the core costs for a primary school and secondary school are ever going to be the same but that is where we are. In reality whilst you as a school have less funding as a lump sum, the £70K difference would still have been in your overall funding at LA level. It is how it has then been apportioned to the other different funding streams of the NFF that dictates whether your school has really seen that £70K in funding again or not.
In terms of the lump sum of £115K not being enough to open safely, warm, with water, toilets and lights, the costs at my 420 pupil primary school are £27000 for water rates and all energy costs and throwing in costs of staff to open up etc, do not come to more than £50k. So not sure how you spend £115K a year on this and maybe a place for some savings.
There has been some work done on what an average primary school class costs to run and the figure is somewhere around 25 pupils per classroom to be breaking even in costs of staffing and running the classroom. So JWIM when you have 4 classes for 105 pupils you must already be on the cusp of being in deficit based on that average figure. I fully accept that primary schools with 70 to 100 pupils in them are probably the most difficult to get to a position where the number of classes and the school finances make sense.
Where is your next cut coming from is difficult to know without a good look at your accounts but my first question would be whether or not you can financially have a headteacher for a single school of such size. There is more and more evidence that says the answer is no under our current funding scenario. One question that needs answering is whether a non-teaching head over two schools with three qualified teachers in the school classrooms is a possibility and more cost effective and how could this be achieved. That maybe is one of those very difficult conversations that governing boards now need to be having.

That's very interesting admission. I think one of the problems with small primaries is that, although what you're suggesting might sound like the answer in financial terms, it is very difficult to achieve in real terms. In a small primary, the Head is the heart and soul of the school. In a school like ours, there is really no management structure - just classroom teachers with varying degrees of experience, a few TAs, one or two admin staff, and the Head. If you take the Head away, even partially, who is going to drive the school forward? Who is going to give it strategic direction and vision? Who, frankly, is paid enough to care enough? Plus, of course, the Head is often the one in practical terms who is actually doing a lot of the work - the one meeting with the parents, coming in at weekends to sort out the resources, attending the community events to promote the school, sometimes even pitching in with the cleaning. If you take that away, you're left with over-stretched class teachers who can't (and won't) do any more than they're doing, TAs who are barely paid more than the minimum wage, and admin staff who aren't paid much more and are unlikely to want the additional hours and responsibility. There is no-one else to pick up that slack. Plus of course, if you're the first school in an area to take that step, the likelihood is that at least some parents will choose to send their kids to the school down the road with the full time Head. I fear the most likely scenario is that smaller schools will start to close and amalgamate quite shortly, unless funding is substantially increased.

I wonder whether the OP is still considering standing as a parent governor .

OP, I realise the thread has moved in a bit from your OP, but I would like to add that as some have said, every school operates differently. I am a staff governor and can state that on our GB, every governor is heard and there are no 'cliques'that get together to vote things through. Mind you, we are a very small GB - only 7 of us. We have responsibilities based on the SIP, not classes. Die to our number, we do not have lots of separate committees - rather, we are all members of all committees, with the exception that staff governors cannot be on teachers pay committee etc.
If you want anything idea of how it all works, have a look here

Admission I don't disagree with what you have written but see nothing positive for the education of children. And yes, under the ?fairer funding formula we do not get back to the level of funding pre-the lump sum reduction, as indeed do virtually none of the one form entry or smaller primary schools in our local authority. And we are at the lower end of the LA funding per pupil too.

If we keep cutting and cutting I can say that strategically we will be offering a poorer education in years to come for our infant class children than those currently in the juniors. So - even in our school we are being forced to make choices that means no equality of opportunity for the younger children.