School Govenors - what do you think the role should be?

[ontheup]

I am thinking of volunteering as a govenor for a local primary school - what are your experiences of either being a govenor or what a good govenor did? Trying to work out if I have the right stuff!!

dp is governor of our local primary.

He has been for years, in fact before our littlies were born - dd2 now goes to the nursery there and ds will follow early next year

As long as you have some spare time and care about the school you will make a good governor. There are loads of different committees and things so you can pretty much choose what suits you (although at first you may just cop for what nobody else wants)

He really enjoys it and it looks blardy good on his cv

I'm in the process of trying to do this - got a proposer and seconder, now I just need a personal statement in 100 words or less! Our local council (county, not town) has some useful looking stuff about governors' responsibilities, and there's also this website which isn't terribly user-friendly but has some good links under 'new user'.

I'm an auditor, and when I do audits of schools one of the things I have to check is the 'governance' arrangements at the school. This includes the governing body.

1. the school should provide information for people interested in becoming governors
2. your local education authority should provide some form of training for new governors
3. I think it's most important that governors are committed to the school and being a good governor.
4. Schools have a lot of difficulty getting enough governors, so as long as you show that you will do the job properly, you shouldn't have too much trouble.(this varies by region though I think)

I really think you don't have to be an expert at anything, just be willing, interested and committed. People who do have specific expertise often end up on subcommittees, so a governor who works in FInance in RL might end up on the finance committee as well, if that makes sense.