Governors meetings

Hello world.

Lets have a NICE blog entry today shall we?

I've always had a nice relationship with teaching staff and banging heads with them like I appear to be at the moment is not nice. I've always fought for them in my Governor role and worked hard when dealing with' tough as old boots' Headteachers who don't like to change their ways!
To explain more about my governance role;-

Every state UK school (That is every free school) has a voted for board of governors who decide the ethos of the school, set policy accodingly, look after the finances, ensure the buildings are of a good standard, make sure the children are learning inline with the national curriculum, employ staff and lots of other jobs too which escape me now.
I'm known as the 'boffin' one but also I'm quite good at getting information out of people too as I have good people skills. If only that teacher my daughter is having problems with would get down off her high horse! But I digress.....

A for instance here of what sorts of things I have done as I governor. I first became a governor at an Infant's school which is for children aged 3-7. As soon as I joined, I became the 'numeracy governor. I had a great teacher to work with who I had a good relationship with.
I used to go in to help out as well as doing my governor visits and decided with a friend to write the school's first visits policy so that all governors had something to work with. That policy was what the headteacher at the Junior school used to write his policy on and I've 'jigged' it since but want to look at it again if I'm allowed by the new chair! Anyway........After a year, the vice chair of governors phoned me up and said he was going to go for chair and would I be up for the vice chair role? NO!!! I was not ready for that and felt more happy to chair a committee. What I did not realize would happen was that next year, I'd gain more experience of governance than I'd ever know. I also (because I thought two schools would be the same as one) decided to go for the vote at the junior school. There were two places and there isn't normally much of a contest but I was quite proud to win by a landslide (Not to show off though) So I had these two governing bodies and I thought it would be OK......WRONG!) All hell broke loose at the Infants and I had to help plug the holes in because the following year after that we had an inspection and it never ever ends.
Idecided not to fulfill my term at the Infants and left early. The irony was that I was at this point vice chair at both schools and finding both unique and very hard work in fact too much hard work. I tend to put everything into my 'job' and so even though I wasn't working it meant I put more into this. I handed in my resignation in January and one reason was because I was watching my mother overwork and I didn't want to do that to myself. I didn't know that two weeks after I was to finish at the infants, my mother was going to suddenly drop dead at the age of 56. Big shock......

My meeting today is a committee - It's pastoral and personnel which basically covers staff, pupil, parent and anyone else who happens to be at the school welfare. Good fun.