DGP In-School Support

In-School Support

This is not time limited – the support can be tailored to your need and budget. Experienced school practitioners who are also serving governors deliver all support. We often tailor these sessions to run at the times your governing body normally meets.

Examples of in school support delivered include sessions on:

• Supported Governance Self Evaluation
• Developing a Strategic Vision with KPIs, targets and Monitoring tool
• Safeguarding
• How can a governing body help to raise standards?
• Taking the strategic approach governance – monitoring and evaluation
• Getting a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities to maximise effectiveness
• Effective governor visits to school
• How to encourage parental involvement
• Skilling the Governing body to feel more confident with their financial responsibilities
• Preparing your governing body for an Ofsted inspection

“Quite an eye opener- I have learned so much.”

“An excellent session.”

“So good to have this training specifically for us and our situation.”

“Good, concise, informative, lots to think about. We are leaving with very clear objectives.”

Dates, Venue and time: By mutual agreement

Cost: £550 per day/ £300 per half day (3 hours)

Figures are based on up to 10 participants. Additional participants are £25 per person

External Review of Governance

The DGP external audit review process is based on the good practice identified by the National College for Teaching and Leadership and is informed by their pilots.

Increasingly more schools are seeing the benefits of these reviews to improve their governance practices. It is a positive process, which will help your governing body improve and set clear targets for further developments.

You need not wait for Ofsted to tell you to do this – you can act now and commission an external audit yourselves.

The audit review process includes core activities and a final written document:

• Determination of the process and procedures the review will follow
• Supported self-review, skills audit and self-evaluation
• Review of documentation
• Face to face discussion and meetings with the whole governing body
• Review presented to the board

The audit is carried out by experienced serving governors, former Ofsted inspectors, NLGs.

‘That was excellent; I can’t tell you how helpful this has been.’

‘The review has given us a real focus and direction.’

‘So useful to get that external perspective on our work.’

Dates, Venue and time: By mutual agreement

Cost: £1250

Prices can vary depending on the extent of the agreed remit of the review.

Chair of Governor’s Peer Review

An opportunity to be part of a new process where professionally facilitated triads of Chairs of Governors will meet to support and collaborate with each other to review and develop their role to support strong school governance.

Each of the three Chair of Governors completes a DGP questionnaire on the following areas:

• How do you give your governing body a clear lead and direction, ensuring that the governors work as an effective team and understand their accountability and the part they play in the strategic leadership of the school and in driving school improvement?
• How do you build the team: attracting governors with the necessary skills and ensuring that tasks are delegated across the governing body so that all members contribute, and feel that their individual skills, knowledge and experience are well used and that the overall workload is shared?
• How have you built your relationship with the headteacher: Being a critical friend by offering support, challenge and encouragement, holding the headteacher to account and ensuring the Headteacher’s performance management is rigorous and robust; a good comparison is with the role of the chair of a board of trustees who works with the chief executive of an organisation but does not run day-to-day operations?
• How do you carry out your role in improving your school: ensuring school improvement is the focus of all policy and strategy and that governor scrutiny, monitoring and challenge reflect school improvement priorities?
• How do you lead the business: ensuring that statutory requirements and regulations are met, that the school provides value for money in its use of resources and that governing body business is conducted efficiently and effectively?

Completed questionnaires are shared in confidence by email with the two others in the review plus the experienced external facilitator who is also a Chair of Governors. These are then presented and reviewed at a half day peer review meeting of the three chairs with the external facilitator. Each chair will take a turn at being constructively and supportively questioned by the others about their answers to clarify what is working well and identify areas for development. Experience shows that chairs involved in this process learn as much from acting as a reviewer as they do from being the reviewee. Each Chair of Governors will leave the session with areas for development identified within a personal action plan.

Dates, Venue and time: By mutual agreement

Cost: £550 per day/ £300 per half day (3 hours)

Figures are based on up to 10 participants. Additional participants are £25 per person.