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Agenda and minutes

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Ground Floor Meeting Room 5 - Civic Offices. View directions

Contact: Lisa Gallacher 02392 834056  Email: lisa.gallacher@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

10.

Apologies for absence

Minutes:

Apologies for absence were received from education representatives Mark Mitchell and Helen Reeder. 

11.

Declarations of Member Interests

Minutes:

Councillor Stubbs declared a personal non prejudicial interest as he is a governor at Milton Cross School. 

12.

Minutes of the meeting held on 24 February 2014 pdf icon PDF 155 KB

RECOMMENDED that the minutes of the Education, Children and Young

People Scrutiny Panel meeting held on 24 February 2014 be confirmed

and signed by the Chair as a correct record.

Minutes:

RESOLVED that the minutes of the Education, Children and Young People's Scrutiny Panel held on 24 February 2014 be confirmed as a correct record. 

13.

Review of School Governance Arrangements

The following witnesses will be attending to speak and answer questions from

the panel:

• Mark Hanna, Parent Governor, Portsdown Primary School

Cheryl Herrall Parent Governor, Devonshire Infant School

 

 

 

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed Mr Hanna to the meeting. 

 

Mark Hanna, Parent Governor at Portsdown Primary School

Mr Hanna explained that he felt becoming a parent governor was an important way to help improve the school and was the easiest way that parents can make a difference to their child's education.  It was down to the governors of a school to help the children's future and they all needed to work together to do the best that they can.  As a parent governor Mr Hanna said he always tried his upmost to attend governors meetings however as many parent governors have full time jobs, attendance at meetings was often an issue for them.  He felt that parent governors did make a huge difference to the running of the school and that it was a shame there were not more parents willing to become governors. 

He explained that he found it useful to use the first six months of his role to absorb all the information and understand the school.  He said it took him approximately six months to become fully involved in the running of the school.  It was important for governors to ask challenging questions of the head teacher and query any data that they do not understand. 

In response to questions from the panel Mr Hanna made the following points:

·         With regard to parent governors understanding school date, Mr Hanna advised that with his background he was able to easily interpret the finance data however it was important for parent governors to ask the head teacher to put the data into an easier format to comprehend or if this was not possible for them to explain this to governors.  Governors also need to help each other understand the data and provide support to their colleagues to help the school. 

·         He was offered huge amounts of training from the governor services team on a variety of issues including sessions on understanding data, which he had taken up.  However, he said that he had not been able to attend as much training as he would have liked as the training courses had usually coincided with the date of the governing board meetings.  The date of the training sessions had now changed so he was now able to attend more training sessions. 

·         With regard to barriers to recruitment of parent governors, Mr Hanna said he felt the main reason was a lack of understanding from the parents' point of view on what the role involves.  He felt that many parents felt they do not possess the right skills or have a very high education background themselves, and feel that they will be talked down on.  Many parents also do not have the confidence and understanding of the school terminology and mentioned that parents can get quite irate if teachers assume they understand the vocabulary and talk down to them. Parents can be put of talking to teachers because of this despite the teachers not meaning to do this.    

·         He said he had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 13.