The Governing Body currently has 14 members, representing parents, staff and the local community.
Chairman and Co-opted Governor
Mr Ian Walker
Vice Chair and Co-opted Governor
Mrs Sara Kingan
Staff Governors
Mr Peter Cresswell
Mr Gareth Mate
LEA/Parish Council Appointed Governors
Mrs Celia Brooks
Mr Terry Mayor
Councillor John Cottee
Parent Governors
Mr Daniel Jones
Dr Jonathan Maston
Mrs Catherine Cox
Mr Chris Neale
Mr Stuart Williams
Co-opted Governors
Mrs Judy Stocker
The Governing Body
The Governing Body is responsible for overseeing the running of the school. It sets out the school’s guiding principles and works hard to ensure that it is run professionally and efficiently, making the best use of the money that it is given in order to give the best possible education to the children.
The Governors of the school are appointed in various different ways but typically for four year terms of office. Some are Parent Governors, elected from those who have children at the school. Others represent the staff of the school and yet others are appointed by the Local Authority. Finally we have Co-opted Governors, who are invited to join the Governing Body because of some expertise or experience which can be of benefit to the school.
All Governors give their time freely and are required to attend a full Governors’ meeting once each term. In addition we have various committees and working groups which meet regularly to discuss the detail of the running of the school. This work ranges from trying to anticipate the future and plan for the next few years to understanding how different subjects are taught and from monitoring health and safety standards to deciding how many people we should employ and what roles they should fulfil.
The responsibilities placed upon the Governors seem to increase year on year as more of the tasks of running schools are delegated out to the schools themselves, away from central Government and the Local Authority. This provides greater and greater challenges to the Head Teacher and the other Governors which can appear a formidable and daunting task for any new Governor. While it can be hard work, the reward comes from seeing the school continue to be successful and the Ofsted report in 2007 was a very welcome approval of how well we do things.
Thankfully, Crossdale has a number of very experienced Governors who can provide a level of ongoing stability and these are very successfully balanced by newer faces who bring new enthusiasm and ideas to keep things fresh and up to date. Nevertheless, it remains a continuing challenge having to decide how best to spend the budget that we are given and to ensure that the children get the very best education that we can provide. Major items of expenditure over the previous year have included replacing the canopies to provide shelter outside the school, increasing the number of laptops available and replacing all lighting in the school to bring it up to a modern standard. One of the real priorities of the Crossdale Governors is to involve Parents as much as possible and to make sure the school works with Parents in the best way it can.