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A member of the Brookfield School PTA calls the tune at the Highgate school’s summer fair |
Call for governors: parents urged to help make our schools better
BUILDING a £300million homes, shops and offices development might seem like a time consuming job – but builders, project managers and architects working on the St Giles Circus scheme in the West End have found time to lend their skills to a primary school.
St Joseph’s Roman Catholic primary school in Macklin Street now has four new governors from the construction firm on its board.
Last autumn, a group of volunteers from the building company Bovis gave their time to redecorate the school’s entrance hall and basement playground.
This led to a meeting, with a view to providing the school with some financial assistance. But after speaking with headteacher, Helen Tyler, the developers – multi-nationals Legal and General and Mitsubishi – discovered the school was really after practical experience.
The result was four new governors being appointed and offering their expertise in such areas as finance, design, maintenance and staff management.
They have helped identify exactly what aims the school has, and more practical building issues – starting with a new assembly hall and stage area through to looking at ways to increase pupil capacity.
But other schools in Camden have not been so lucky. As the new school term starts, there are currently 92 vacancies across Camden for governors. A council spokeswoman said: “Governors tend to stand down at the end of the academic year. The majority of those are parents whose children have since left the school.”
With so many vacancies to fill, school heads are hoping parents will step up to the plate.
Education commentator and former Downing Street aide Fiona Millar has been a governor at Gospel Oak school since 1991 and at William Ellis secondary school since 2001. She said: “There are all sorts of challenges, being a governor, but what is important is that parents get involved. At Gospel Oak we have helped make the school a better place over the years, and you can see the results.”
She added that central government and councils could do more to help governors. She said: “There should be compulsory training for governors. At Gospel Oak we also offered payments to help with childcare so people on lower incomes can get involved.”
Rhyl primary school chairwoman Helen Reardon-Bond has been a governor for eight years. She now works at a Whitehall office as head of gender equality policy and has been working to promote governorships for people from the black and ethnic minorities.
She said: “It is particularly important that school governing bodies represent the communities they serve.”
Conservative councillor and schools chief Andrew Mennear told the New Journal of the vital work governors do.
He said: “Camden has a good record of having parents of governors but we are always still keen to ensure all members of our community are represented.”
He added: “It is also important to ensure all parents of the school community understand what’s being done to improve the school and how their children are being educated.”
He said that as well as being governors, parents had an important input to make on Parents and Teachers Associations. |
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