Mayfield Primary SchoolOur Governance
MAYFIELD PRIMARY SCHOOL: GOVERNING BODY
Over the last seven years, since Mr Denton arrived, we have worked hard alongside him to establish and develop our independent governor understanding and awareness of the work planned and undertaken by all school leaders through each phase of our various School Development Plans. If we have the knowledge and understanding then we can accurately measure the progress of school and evaluate the impact of every action alongside our school based senior leadership team. In turn, we can then strongly and accurately influence its strategic direction in a meaningful way which offers both support and challenge. Holding to account and being a 'critical friend' is essential in our work and we have programmed a governor calendar of events, governor recruitment, new approaches to meetings, bespoke training sessions (include bitesize remote and face-to-face training events) and new style governor development planning in order to create the capacity, knowledge and skills to provide the challenge needed and ensure that we deliver upon our core school intention and take our school forward in a sustainable fashion.
Governors are delighted with the sustained progress made by school during this time, including its hugely significant rise within the community to being a school of first choice, and are now aiming to ensure that the platform is there is sustain capacity in the years to come.
Chair of Governing Body: Mr Mark Burge
Vice-Chair of Governing Body: Mrs Jenny Coles
Community Link Lead: Cllr Cheryl Little
Standards Challenge Group Lead: Mr Ben Leah
Named Pay & Appraisal Lead: Mrs Jenny Coles
Lead Governor for Remote Learning & Recovery Funding/Tuition Funding: Mr Mark Burge with Mr Nick Taylor
Headteacher Appraisal: Mrs Jenny Coles, Mr Mark Burge & Mrs Liz Fleming (Reserve: Mrs Gemma Clark)
Complaints: Mr Mark Burge
Skills Audit & Action Plans: Mrs Liz Fleming
SEND Governor: Mrs Gemma Clark
Pupil Premium: Mrs Gemma Clark
Staff Well Being: Mr Ben Leah
Health & Safety: Mr Mark Burge
Safeguarding: All Governors Trained Annually - named lead is Mr Mark Burge
English/Mathematics: Mr Ben Leah
Curriculum Overview including PSHE: Mr Ben Leah
Early Years: Mrs Gemma Clark
Parent Communication: Mrs Gemma Clark & Mrs Liz Fleming
SFVS: Mr Mark Burge
Training: Mrs Jenny Coles
GDPR: Mr Mark Burge
Website Compliance: Mr Ben Leah
| Full Governing Body | Designation | Date Appointed Under Current Designation |
| Mr Mark Burge | Co-Opted | 13/04/15 |
| Mrs Gemma Clark | Parent Governor | 16/07/24 |
| Ms Jenny Coles | Co-Opted | 20/03/18 |
| Mr Glyn Denton | Headteacher | 01/09/19 |
| Mrs Liz Fleming | Co-Opted | 13/04/15 |
| Mr Nick Taylor | Staff Governor | 25/11/25 |
| TBA (Election Dec 2025) | Parent Governor | |
| Mr Ben Leah | Co-Opted | 19/07/22 |
| Cllr Cheryl Little | LA Governor | 28/11/23 |
In 2024/2025 the governing body's constitution required us to have the following: Full Governing Body - six formal meetings per academic year. Three of which had a lead focus upon finance and resourcing (blue meetings) and three of which had a standards focus (red meetings - although retaining a finance/resources overview). There were also Standards Challenge Group Meetings x 3 supported by a significant number of Governor Challenge Events across the year outside of the meeting schedule which members of the group can attend in pairs. Pay & Appraisal Committee work was integrated into blue resource responsibilities (Autumn 2024) for 2024/2025. In addition, specialist governors meet with school leaders upon their specific areas. Below is the attendance of governors at the above scheduled meetings and events for 2024/2025.
| Governor | Full Governing Body Attendance | Resource Focus Attendance |
Standards Focus Attendance & Additional Challenge Events (Number of possible event visits will vary due to nature of Governor duties within the group.) |
| Mr Mark Burge | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings and 3 of 3 Challenge Events |
| Mrs Gemma Clark | 5 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
| Ms Jenny Coles | 5 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
| Mr Glyn Denton | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings All Challenge Events |
| Mrs Liz Fleming | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | N/A |
| Miss Michelle Haythornthwaite | 4 of 5 Meetings | 2 of 3 Meetings | N/A |
| Mr Ben Leah | 6 of 6 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings | 3 of 3 Meetings and 2 of 2 Challenge Events |
| Councillor Cheryl Little | 5 of 6 Meetings | 2 of 3 Meetings | 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
| Mr Craig Morris | 1 of 1 Meetings | 1 of 1 Meetings | 1 of 1 Challenge Event |
GOVERNORS LATEST WORK/PRIORITIES: ANNUAL REVIEW - THREE YEAR CYCLE
The summary below captures some of our main recent, and current, major actions/focus areas within both our development planning, ongoing activities and work. We have used the latest Maintained Schools: Governance Guide - Features of Effective Governance in our most recent planning cycle, which replaces previous plans under the now withdrawn guidance upon Six Areas of Effective Governance. Many of the areas and principles overlap and have allowed for us to use the latest guidance whilst maintaining a clear and consistent focus for our role and expectations from planning cycle to planning cycle.
Effective Governance Resources have also been used to guide and support our current cycle of work.
We always capture our work under these Features of Effective Governance.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/maintained-schools-governance-guide/maintained-schools-governance-guide
1) SKILLS AUDIT (WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE SIX FEATURES OF EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE) 'EVALUATION'
The governing body evaluates and plans future work in line with features of effective governance. Each audit of skills allows us to generate priorities that will improve, develop and enhance our work. Two notable aspects, during our recent cycles, that have helped to improve the strategic work and operating structures of the governing body have been: identifying skill sets or 'gaps in knowledge' to aid and pitch governor recruitment. (Allowing us to target specific skills and backgrounds to ensure we have the broad range of knowledge and abilities that we require.) This has now been influential in the appointment of the last six governors to our governing body. As you will see further down, our evaluations have also allowed us to focus upon streamlining the number of governors and revise the meeting structure (spending greater time discussing the core matters as a result with fewer governors who are more actively involved and knowledgeable - avoiding redudant time and repetition).
Mr Denton and his team have the philosophy of 'always start with why you are doing something'. We share this approach and have used this work to drive our next steps. We believe the governing body is more effective as a result of this annual process.
2) PARENT FORUM 'EVALUATION'
We have worked on ways to develop our voice with families within the community. The most successful system has been the introduction of Parent Forums with families, staff and governor representatives in attendance. Whilst this has been a useful way of understanding and gauging views, we now feel this is ready for new approach and are therefore making plans for new means of gethering views whilst running this model. We feel telling the community about our current work, views and actions alongside gathering perspectives can only aid our wider understanding and effectiveness moving forward.
3) GOVERNOR CHALLENGE & ACCOUNTABILITY EVENTS 'ACCOUNTABILITY'
Alongside Mr Denton, the governing body identied the need to create our own first hand evidence to judge the impact of the our school leaders development plan actions. Whilst we meet regularly and receive relevant information which forms the basis of questioning and analysis, we wanted to see impact and current position of school ourselves. We therefore devised challenge events where teams/pairs of governors visit classrooms, chat with learners, meet with staff, study the learning environment and any other relevant evidence to form what we call a three point 'or triangulated' body of evidence to form our own judgements about the progress of the school. It is not our role to judge the quality of teaching and learning - but is the role of governors to have enough evidence to hold leaders to account and to know the school's current position in order to support leaders work. An example of our challenge report template is attached below. We are finding this work to be a huge step forward and have a full programme planned for the year ahead.
4) GOVERNOR STUDY GROUP 'PEOPLE'
During our evaluation of governance, we planned to increase our own training and knowledge by creating a study group that looks at aspects of Mayfield's work. We receive training, updates and then study items in a discussion forum. It is a deeper dive into those important areas of governance that our formal meetings do not always offer the time or chance to undertake. We still attend relevant central training and remain up-to-date but this is largely an 'in house' body of work which we can really personalise to what we need. We have most recently been studying the new approaches to teaching and learning that Mr Denton and his team have been driving through school. We have studied the 'learned helplessness' philosophy and its impact upon our school community and have studied the key data headlines by looking at DfE documents, we have more recently been looking at our new curriculum, its approach, methods, coverage and its linked Classroom Craft elements. We also undertook studies, at the time, upon the remote learning and catch-up funding in order to ensure we found active solutions to a very difficult period of time caused by Covid-19. Mr Denton always works with governors to share the current approach to staff development and progression. It is interesting work overall and is greatly enhancing the understanding of teaching and learning progress for the governors involved.
5) COMMITTEE & MEETING STRUCTURE REVISIONS 'GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES'
As highlighted previously, during our evaluation of governance, we determined to look at our use of time in meetings and during school visits to ensure that all governors were actively involved as much as possible, receiving consistent messages, gathering their own independent evidence to help shape views and avoiding redundant or repetitive elements within precious meeting time. Meaning less governors are better informed to support and challenge within a tighter structure that expects high engagement. The current structure of the governing body and the way we operate reflects this assessment and the actions we have taken over time.
6) SCHOOL VISION & CURRICULUM 'STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP'
Since we appointed Mr Denton to the role of headteacher, he has worked alongside the governing body to re-imagine and re-energise our core school intent and what it stands for. This has then moved into the whole school review and re-launch of the curriculum as 'I Dream of Being...'. We have offered our views, thoughts and aspects which we feel meet the needs of our families in our school community and from there have empowered Mr Denton and his team to make this happen. We are spending extensive time during meeting and Governor Challenge Events looking first-hand at the ongoing impact of this development plan work.
7) REPORTING AND ACCOUNTABILITY 'COMPLIANCE'
Since Mr Denton's arrival we have worked alongside him to re-shape the kind of information we would like from him and how we would like him, and his team, to present this. A working group - alongside LCC advisors - created new ways to study our children's achievements, attendance and behaviour. We then received full training on this for all governors. This work has ensured that we are receiving the correct information, can ask the correct questions and inform our strategic role in school. We discuss this area constantly and have reviewed processes ready for the year ahead - the latest work has included practical revisions to the way in which our Standards Challenge Group meet and operare alongside the extension of Governor Challenge Events and Study Groups.
These outlined areas are constantly a feature of our work but are at different stages of implementation and development. Some of these are now well-established and operating we have termed this: embedding (green). Others have been introduced in a recent action plan and are now: developing (amber). Other aspects are new to our current development planning cycle and are: emerging (red).
We structure our plans on this three step approach. It also ensures that we never have too many major priorities being driven at any one time making our work achieveable within a sensible workload and timescale given our role as volunteers.
The current Governance Development Plan can be downloaded below.
The Register Of Business Interests & Challenge Visit Triangulation Document can also be downloaded below.