Teacher - governor?

[SheStoodInTheStorm]

There's an opportunity to be a governor at my child's school. I am considering it but not sure whether it's manageable on top of teaching. Are of you teachers also governors?

If it's a large school then it might be different but personally I wouldn't do it again at my own school.

Effectively you are holding your boss to account. It changes your relationship with your employer permanently.

I would do it again at a different school though

I am one, although not at my DC's school. I work part-time (0.8) but it is a lot to fit in still. I don't have time to do many visits to the school and there are quite frequent meetings. However, it's good to have someone with an educational background on board.

Yes I am a governor of an sen school. It is very time consuming but also very interesting. If you are prepared to devote some time to it then it is a good thing to do. However make sure you are doing it with the right approach. I think it makes it much harder to complain about things relating to your own children as you then have a slightly different relationship with staff. It is perhaps better to be a governor where you don't have children as you can then be assertive and hold the school more to account. Questioning sit as a parent is not always easy.

Trying to think how much time I've put in this year to give you an idea (granted I'm more involved than some of our lesser-spotted personalities and we've just had Ofsted looming so it'll be on the high side).

1xfull govs meeting a term = probably a couple of hours if it's getting waffly, an hour if it's a quieter time of the year
2x committee meetings a term (but not everyone comes to everything) - hour and a half perhaps on a "bad" one
Reading for the above
Then we're asked to do a monitoring visit with the curriculum lead for any areas we're link governor for a term - which is about half an hour or so (and see the comment about some of the lesser-spotted ones)
The other stuff is more things if people "can" make them - things like the day in school, and data monitoring sessions during the school day - to be honest its 1-2 people who actually go to the data stuff if that.

Being honest most of the reading before meetings gets done while I'm waiting for the kids to go to sleep at bedtime and it's something that can expand into a huge time sink if you let/want it to or remain fairly manageable if you don't. We've had a bigger time demand as we knew we were due the Big O back this year so we've been on perma-Ofsted footing most of the year.

I'll be honest, despite enjoying it (and I think being fairly good at it), I'm considering resigning just because I'm sick to death of the chair's open annoyance that he got a mummy who happened to be a teacher choose to stand for and get parent governor when he wanted another nice businessman in a shiny suit who works in accounts (and won't bloody show up like the rest of 'em don't)!

It does make it INCREDIBLY hard sometimes to challenge things if you're a parent governor at the school having issues with things on a "mum" level - I've had to walk the tightrope a few times this year over it and it's been tough to find the line and I've taken a lot of advice from an experienced fellow governor on how to handle it - and probably made my kid put up with a bit more nonsense than they should have done really. You end up really really having to compartmentalise the crap out of the situations - I would say it's making sure you're acting according to the "hat" you're wearing at the time but it's probably more metaphorical lanyards these days.

Really helpful insights, thank you!

Hadn't considered the impact of being a governor on being a school mum.