At the Full Governing Board meeting held on 12th February 2025, the Board agreed to move to the circle structure of school governance. The circle model of governance empowers schools to streamline their decision-making processes by reducing the reliance on committee meetings in favour of a more consolidated approach.

Effective governance is based on six key features:

• Strategic leadership - sets and champions vision, ethos and strategy
• Accountability - drives up educational standards and financial performance
• People - with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity
• Structure - that reinforce clearly defined roles and responsibilities
• Compliance - with statutory and contractual requirements
• Evaluation - to monitor and improve the quality and impact of governance

In the circle model, no decisions are delegated down to committees, so all the power stays within full board meetings. Each full board meeting will have one main focus, such as curriculum or finance, and meetings are planned to match relevant school deadlines.  So, a finance focussed meeting would be held when the budget needs approval, and a curriculum focussed meeting would be held to review results.

It is up to the board to decide how many meetings should take place per year, but the standard minimum in a circle model is six full governor meetings per year, so one per half term.

Individual or pairs of governors are assigned to monitor areas that would have been covered by a committee.  Governors agreed the following governor monitoring roles:

          School Finance (monitoring pair) – Jo Dunn and [TBC]

          SEND – Diane McVey

          Safeguarding – Hannah Senior

          Wellbeing & Mental Health (staff and pupils) – Ian Culligan

          Pupil Premium – Jo Breakell

          Health and Safety – Hannah Senior

          Governor Development and Training – Jo Dunn

          SDP Priority 1: Emotionally Healthy Practices and Strong Behaviour Management and Wellbeing - Ian Culligan

          SDP Priority 2: Curriculum Leadership Development through Subject Leaders - Diane McVey

          SDP Priority 3: Curriculum Development in EYFS and KS1 - Laura Fleming

If you have any questions regarding the new model of governance, please contact the Chair of Governors chair@lindow.cheshire.sch.uk