Mayfield Primary SchoolOur Governance
MAYFIELD PRIMARY SCHOOL: GOVERNING BODY
Chair of Governors: Mr Mark Burge
Over the last five years, since Mr Denton arrived, we have worked hard alongside him to develop our independent governor understanding and awareness of the work planned and undertaken by all school leaders through each phase of our various School Development Plans. If we have the knowledge and understanding then we can accurately measure the progress of school and evaluate the impact of every action alongside our school based senior leadership team. In turn, we can then strongly and accurately influence its strategic direction in a meaningful way which offers both support and challenge. Holding to account and being a 'critical friend' is essential in our work and we have programmed a new governor calendar of events, new approaches to meetings, bespoke training sessions (include bitesize remote and face-to-face training events) and new governor development planning in order to create the capacity, knowledge and skills to provide the challenge needed and ensure that we deliver upon our core school intention and take our school forward in a sustainable fashion. Governors are delighted with the rapid progress made by school during this time and are building to sustain and enhance this during this latest cycle.
Chair of Governing Body: Mr Mark Burge
Vice-Chair of Governing Body:
Community Link Leads: Cllr Cheryl Little
Standards Challenge Group Lead: Mr Ben Leah
Pay Group Lead: Mrs Jenny Coles
Lead Governor for Remote Learning & Recovery Funding/Tuition Funding: Miss Michelle Haythornthwaite
Headteacher Appraisal: Mrs Jenny Coles, Mr Mark Burge & Mrs Gemma Clark
Skills Audit & Action Plans: Mrs Elizabeth Fleming & Miss Michelle Haythornthwaite
SEND Governor: Mrs Gemma Clark
Pupil Premium: Mrs Gemma Clark
Staff Well Being: Mr Ben Leah
Health & Safety: Mr Mark Burge
Safeguarding: All Governors Trained Annually - named lead is Mr Mark Burge
English/Mathematics: Mr Ben Leah
Curriculum Overview including PSHE: Mr Ben Leah
Early Years: Mrs Gemma Clark
Parent Communication: Mrs Gemma Clark & Mrs Elizabeth Fleming
SFVS: Mr Mark Burge
Training: Mrs Jenny Coles
GDPR: Mr Mark Burge
Website Compliance: Mr Ben Leah
| Full Governing Body | Designation | Date Appointed Under Current Designation * |
| Mr Mark Burge | Co-Opted | 13/04/15 |
| Mrs Gemma Clark | Co-Opted | 16/07/24 |
| Ms Jenny Coles | Co-Opted | 20/03/18 |
| Mr Glyn Denton | Headteacher | 01/09/19 |
| Mrs Elizabeth Fleming | Co-Opted | 13/04/15 |
| Miss Michelle Haythornthwaite | Staff Governor | 14/05/24 |
| Mrs Helen Lamb | Parent Governor | 14/11/20 |
| Mr Ben Leah | Co-Opted | 19/07/22 |
| Cllr Cheryl Little | LA Governor | 28/11/23 |
In 2023/2024 the governing body's constitution required us to have the following: Full Governing Body - six formal meetings per academic year. Three of which had a focus upon finance and resourcing (blue meetings) and three of which had a standards focus (red meetings). There were also a significant number of Governor Challenge Events across the year outside of the meeting schedule. range of bespoke Governor Challenge events). Pay Committee work was integrated into blue resource responsibilities (Autumn 2023) for 2023/2024. In addition, specialist governors meet with school leaders upon their specific areas. Below is the attendance of governors at the above scheduled meetings and events for 2023/2024.
| Governor | Full Governing Body Attendance | Resource Focus Attendance |
Standards Focus Attendance & Challenge Events (Number of possible event visits will vary due to nature of Governor duties within the group.) |
| Mr Mark Burge | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings and 3 of 3 Challenge Events |
| Mrs Gemma Clark | 1 of 1 Meeting (App. Sum 24) | N/A | 1 of 1 Meeting 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
| Ms Jenny Coles | 4 of 6 Meetings | 2 of 3 Meetings | 2 of 3 Meetings |
| Mr Glyn Denton | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings 6 of 6 Challenge Events |
| Mrs Elizabeth Fleming | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings |
| Miss Michelle Haythornthwaite | 2 of 2 Meetings (App. Sum 24) | 1 of 1 Meeting | 1 of 1 Meeting |
| Mrs Helen Lamb | 3 of 6 Meetings | 2 of 3 Meetings | 1 of 3 Meetings and 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
| Mr Ben Leah | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings and 2 of 2 Challenge Events |
| Councillor Cheryl Little | 3 of 5 Meetings (App. Aut 23) | 1 of 2 Meetings | 2 of 3 Meetings and 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
| Mrs Jo Miller | 3 of 4 Meetings | 1 of 2 Meetings | 2 of 2 Meetings |
| Mrs Lisa Musson | 3 of 4 Meetings | 2 of 2 Meetings | 1 of 2 Meetings and Events |
GOVERNORS CURRENT WORK: A THREE YEAR DEVELOPMENT PLAN
The summary below captures our most recent, and current, actions in relation to training, accountability, challenge, strategic planning and preparation for the future.
1) SKILLS AUDIT & SIX AREAS OF EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE 'PEOPLE & EVALUATION'
The governing body evaluates and plans future work in line with six areas of effective governance. Our latest skills audit (or review of strengths and next steps) led to us taking the following steps to further enhance our work and act upon any areas where we felt we could/can improve. This means that work is logically undertaken and no time is wasted as we work alongside Mr Denton and his team. It is also helping us to increase capacity and create longer term continuity in our work and needs. Mrs Musson was recruited due to her financial background and ability to add capacity in an area of need that we had identified. We were also able to recruit new governors in recent times that were elected with an emphasis upon current experience of primary education, private business and links to parental voice - again - targeted areas that we identified and were able to successfully recruit towards. Mr Denton and his team have the philosophy of 'always start with why you are doing something'. We share this approach and have used this work to drive our next steps. We believe the governing body is more effective as a result.
2) GOVERNOR CHALLENGE & ACCOUNTABILITY EVENTS 'ACCOUNTABILITY'
Alongside Mr Denton, the governing body identied the need to create our own first hand evidence to judge the impact of the our school leaders development plan actions. Whilst we meet regularly and receive relevant information which forms the basis of questioning and analysis, we wanted to see impact and current position of school ourselves. We therefore devised challenge events where teams/pairs of governors visit classrooms, chat with learners, meet with staff, study the learning environment and any other relevant evidence to form what we call a three point 'or triangulated' body of evidence to form our own judgements about the progress of the school. It is not our role to judge the quality of teaching and learning - but is the role of governors to have enough evidence to hold leaders to account and to know the school's current position in order to support leaders work. An example of our challenge report template is attached below. We are finding this work to be a huge step forward and have a full programme planned for the year ahead.
3) GOVERNOR STUDY GROUP 'PEOPLE'
During our evaluation of governance, we planned to increase our own training and knowledge by creating a study group that looks at aspects of Mayfield's work. We receive training, updates and then study items in a discussion forum. It is a deeper dive into those important areas of governance that our formal meetings do not always offer the time or chance to undertake. We still attend relevant central training and remain up-to-date but this is largely an 'in house' body of work which we can really personalise to what we need. We have most recently been studying the new approaches to teaching and learning that Mr Denton and his team have been driving through school. We have studied the 'learned helplessness' philosophy and its impact upon our school community and have studied the key data headlines by looking at DfE documents, we have more recently been looking at our new curriculum, its approach, methods, coverage and its linked Classroom Craft elements. We also undertook studies upon the remote learning and catch-up funding in order to ensure we found active solutions to a very difficult period of time caused by Covid-19. Mr Denton always works with governors to share the current approach to staff development and progression. It is interesting work overall and is greatly enhancing the understanding of teaching and learning progress for the governors involved.
4) PARENT FORUM 'PEOPLE & EVALUATION'
We are working on ways to develop our voice with families within the community. New governor reports to parents are in the pipeline for the year ahead as is a central governor role in the wider school stakeholder evaluation in the coming months. We feel telling the community about our current work, views and actions alongside gathering perspectives can only aid our wider understanding and effectiveness moving forward.
5) SCHOOL VISION & CURRICULUM 'STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP'
Since we appointed Mr Denton to the role of headteacher, he has worked alongside the governing body to re-imagine and re-energise our core school intent and what it stands for. This has then moved into the whole school review and re-launch of the curriculum as 'When I Grow Up...'. We have offered our views, thoughts and aspects which we feel meet the needs of our families in our school community and from there have empowered Mr Denton and his team to make this happen. We are spending extensive time during meeting and Governor Challenge Events looking first-hand at the ongoing impact of this development plan work.
6) REPORTING AND ACCOUNTABILITY 'COMPLIANCE, ACCOUNTABILITY & STRUCTURES'
Since Mr Denton's arrival we have worked alongside him to re-shape the kind of information we would like from him and how we would like him, and his team, to present this. A working group - alongside LCC advisors - created new ways to study our children's achievements, attendance and behaviour. We then received full training on this for all governors. This work has ensured that we are receiving the correct information, can ask the correct questions and inform our strategic role in school. We discuss this area constantly and have reviewed processes ready for the year ahead - the latest work has included practical revisions to the way in which our Standards Committee meet and operare alongside the extension of Governor Challenge Events.