About the School Governance Team

We support Dudley's 1600 school governors and the governing bodies of its 109 schools.

These unpaid volunteers have responsibilities for delegated budgets of £170m, and for all the staffing and premises, which accompany the delegated budget.

The team provides traded services bought by governing bodies. These are training services for governors and governing bodies and a clerking service for the governing body and where appropriate committees.

The clerking service provides:

• Model agendas, customised for the specific needs of each governing body
• Calling papers to home or designated address of each governor
• Database containing addresses of all governors, their training involvement and responsibilities of the governing body

The training service provides:

• Governor handbook
• In-House governor training
• Access to core training programme advertised to their home or designated address for each governor

The continuing work and budget of the team depends on a high level of 'buy-back' from governing bodies. In this respect we have been fortunate. For the last four years, training and clerking have each been bought by over 90% of governing bodies.

In addition we fulfill statutory responsibilities for the Directorate for Education and Lifelong Learning. These include appointing Local Authority governors, appointing additional governors, governor appointments, and instruments of government.

Governor recruitment is a growing part of the work of the whole team, as indeed is support through clerking and training for governing bodies of schools causing concern. In addition, on request we support all governing bodies with the appointment of Headteachers.

QUALITY

Each service has been given a 3* grading by the Traded Services Board. We conduct bi-annual service reviews and constantly monitor service provision. The team reports on its work to the Governance Advisory Group. None of this is achieved without high quality, customer-focused team members.