Governance Training and Support (Inclusion and Safeguarding)
As strategic leaders, governors hold a pivotal role in safeguarding and inclusion.
The role of governors in the safeguarding and inclusion space is so often mandated through legislation. The statutory nature of this work is, therefore, really important. Whilst we often benefit from the ‘critical friend’ conversations and challenge, this can only be possible where governors truly understand their roles and the scope of their roles. To that end, whilst the trust ensures that there are support and development opportunities available through the NGA and the National College, we also develop our own training to ensure that we meet the needs of our governors, our local academy committees, our trustees and our members – our training responds to our contexts.
Safeguarding training for governors and trustees
Training that responds to the role of the governor or the trustee
KCSIE says that:
Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure that all governors and trustees receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection (including online) training at induction. This training should equip them with the knowledge to provide strategic challenge to test and assure themselves that the safeguarding policies and procedures in place in schools and colleges are effective and support the delivery of a robust whole school approach to safeguarding. Their training should be updated regularly. (KCSIE, para 79)
Our training is developed to respond to trust-wide lessons learned outcomes from the previous academic year, learning from recent Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, local and regional trends and the statutory guidance. The key purpose of the training is to equip our governors to be able to hold school leaders to account and ask meaningful questions about safeguarding practice within the setting.
Suspensions and Permanent Exclusions: sitting on a Governors' Discipline Committee
The role of the Governors’ Discipline Committee (GDC) is defined in legislation. At Three Spires, we recognise the importance of this role and, as such, our governors are trained at least biannually.
Our training helps with understanding the statutory role of the governor. We regularly refine our training in response to our own lessons learned processes, feedback from previous GDC members, the legislation, the Public Sector Equality Duty and much more.
We ask that our governors engage with suspensions and permanent exclusion training on a biannual basis in order to be able to participate in a GDC. This ensures that GDC members’ knowledge is current and refreshed, which is so very important.
Our training:
- equips governors to understand the representations from the headteacher,
- helps governors to understand the legal role that they play in the statutory exclusions process,
- develops governors’ understanding of the Public Sector Equality Duty,
- explores what “last resort” means,
- unpicks what sort of support a school could have put into place and what to look for in the school’s representations,
- ensures that governors understand the importance of a multi-agency approach,
- encourages governors to ask questions of the clerk to the GDC if they need to clarify any points in the legislation during the meeting.
Importantly, we are transparent in our approach; the same training resources are used for governors and for headteachers – this means that there is no information hidden from anyone.
Attendance training
Training for all school staff, including governors, about attendance is now statutory.
We unpick Working Together to Improve School Attendance (2024) through the lens of a governor. The purpose of this training is to be able to understand the data shared by school leaders and to help governors to evaluate the impact of interventions implemented by the school.
A lot has changed about attendance – the national penalty framework, the addition of new codes, the deletion of some codes, the real focus on support before penalty.
Quick Links
Working Together to Improve School Attendance (2024) – statutory guidance
SEN Code of Practice (2015) – statutory guidance
Keeping Children Safe in Education (2024) – statutory guidance
Suspension and permanent exclusion from maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units in England, including pupil movement (2024) – statutory guidance
