Hello and welcome to Kingsthorne! 

I am Ian Meacheam and I am proud to say that I am the Chair of the Governing Board for Kingsthorne Primary School.  I have been involved with Kingsthorne for some years now, firstly as a Local Education Advisor and then as a governor at the school.

I am a “local lad,” growing up in New Oscott until I left home to go to college. I worked as a teacher in Birmingham and Solihull schools for over 30 years before becoming a school advisor for Birmingham City Council.

From my own experience I can honestly say that Kingsthorne is one of the best schools I have ever worked with. The pupils and staff are enthusiastic and hard-working and it is a privilege as a governor to regularly visit the school and see it in action.

As a governing board we are determined to ensure that all children at Kingsthorne have access to a high quality education throughout their entire school life and we will work tirelessly along with the Head teacher, the staff and the parents to make sure that Kingsthorne pupils prosper and achieve. 

WHAT DOES A GOVERNING BOARD DO?

The school governing board has general responsibility for the conduct of the school with a view to promoting high standards of educational achievement and progress. This generally means that we have the job of making sure that a range of specific procedures and duties are established and completed. This mainly includes some of the following:

• Having involvement in the strategic planning and management of the school, ensuring that we have a clear vision, have an ambitious development plan and checking that we are making an impact on those plans and targets by monitoring our achievements.

• Understanding the provision made within school to deliver the curriculum and ensuring that we meet our legal requirements as well as making sure that we monitor the school’s performance to check that our curriculum provision is accessible to all children.

• Contributing and agreeing to the setting of all school budgets while ensuring that the budgets reflect the priorities of the school and meet our legal financial standards for schools

• Ensuring we have the right staff and the right development and reward systems in place to enable us to deliver high standards of teaching across the school.

• Being satisfied that we have pupil well-being and safeguarding at the heart of everything we do within Kingsthorne.  This covers ensuring that Health and Safety requirements are met, that people working within our school are safe to do so, and that the behaviour of our pupils meets the clearly defined standards that we expect.

OUR TEAMS AND COMMITTEES.

In addition to the full Governing Board we have special teams (committees) that are responsible for focusing on specific elements of the school’s operations and have responsibilities given to them by the Governing Board to oversee the following areas:

The Finance Team:

This team monitors the impact of all leaders, including those responsible for governance, and evaluate how efficiently and effectively the school is managed. In particular, this team focuses on how effectively leadership and management, at all levels, promotes improved teaching within the context of the school, and enable all pupils to overcome specific barriers to learning, for example through the effective use of the pupil premium. The team also ensures that the school budgets are planned and managed appropriately and in accordance with our guidelines. 

The Leading and Learning Team:

This team monitors pupils' progress and achievement. This team also considers the planning and implementation of learning activities across the whole of the school’s curriculum, together with teachers’ marking, assessment and feedback to pupils. The team also monitors pupils support and intervention strategies inside and outside the classroom. 

The Pupil Development and Welfare Team:

This team reviews a range of evidence about behaviour and safety within the school and consider how well the school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development as well as considering the behaviour and safety of pupils attending on-site and off-site alternative provision. The team also monitors pupils' attendance.

LEAD ROLE GOVERNORS.

In addition to our teams our governors are also leading on specific areas of school life.

Details of our Governing Board and their roles are in the table below. If you wish to contact a member of the Governing Board or would like to know more about how to get involved, please contact us on governors@kingsthorne or write to us c/o the school office.