DBE=Diocesan Board of Education PCC=Parochial Church Council

The role of the Board of Governors is to make key strategic decisions for the school and to ensure that all statutory duties are met.

Governing bodies are made up of several categories of school governors who are elected or appointed in different ways. These include staff governors, parent governors, co-opted governors and local authority governors.

The full Governing body meets once every half term, which is six times each academic year. Additional meetings may be called if required.

Certain responsibilities are devolved to committees within the governing body. These committees monitor and discuss aspects of the school and report their findings to the full governing body.

The committees are currently as follows:

The Curzon CofE Primary School

Governor Annual Statement: 2017-2018
Leadership and Management
The leadership of the School remained in the very capable hands of Mrs Lowden and her staff throughout the 2017-2018 academic year. The Curzon School benefits greatly from its team of dedicated and experienced staff who provide an excellent learning setting and comprehensive pastoral care from early years learning until the end of Key Stage 2. The Governing Board would like thank Mrs Lowden and her team for their continued support in the development of the academic excellence and Christian ethos of the school.

I would also like to thank the other Governors for the significant amount of volunteered time which they provided throughout the year performing their key monitoring role and maintaining oversight over many aspects of school life. Governors have completed a full programme of school visits, book reviews and lesson witnessing in addition to attending sub-committee meetings on a regular basis. These activities are regularly reported formally at full Governing Board meetings.

Succession planning is key to the ongoing sustainability of Governing Boards and this has been considered throughout the academic year. The Governing Board is pleased to announce the addition of a new co-opted Governor in the form of Cathy Hastie. This is Cathy’s second term on the Governing Board and she brings valuable additional skills in the fields of education and human resources.

Special thanks must be given to Tony Glover who took the decision during the year to retire fully from the Governing Board. Tony has provided many years of service to the school in a number of roles including Chair which he held for over 15 years.

Behaviour and Safety of all on School Premises and in the Local Environment
The safety and security of our pupils continues to be paramount.
Our premises and H&S committee undertake regular reviews of the status of our property and the premises are maintained to a high standard to provide a good environment for learning. This continues to be a challenge due to restricted budgets. However major repairs and upgrades are prioritised based on a risk basis and potential impact to school operations. Recently this has resulted in an 8 week repair programme of the roof of the school to prevent water ingress and to improve the lighting through replaced skylights.
We are fortunate at the Curzon School that in general the behaviour of our children is exemplary and this enhances the learning environment for all of our children, parents and staff. It is inevitable that minor issues may occur from time to time and we encourage all of our parents with any concerns to raise these with their child’s form teacher by making an appointment at a mutually convenient time.

The Governing Board has been made aware of a number of incidents related to heavy traffic at the ends of the school day. Roads around the school are narrow and inevitably become congested at these times, especially when cars are parked on Church Road and the Common. A number of initiatives to provide additional parking have been explored with local land owners but the options for change are limited. Parking outside the boundaries of the school is outside the scope of both the staff and Governors. However we all have a responsibility to ensure that the area around the school is as safe for our children as possible and we would very much appreciate parents’ support in this matter

Quality of Teaching
Following both the Diocese of Derby and Ofsted inspections which classified the school as "Outstanding" and "Good" respectively during 2015-16, the ongoing focus has been on delivering the key objectives of our School Improvement Plan (SIP). Like all schools we have a School Improvement Partner who regularly reviews and discusses data with the Management Team, ensuring that it is used objectively to drive achievement and standards. Performance against the key outputs from these plans have been monitored throughout the school year via Head Teacher reports and Governor visits and we are pleased to report that progress in accordance with the plans has been demonstrated in all areas.

In addition to visits from external parties (such as Ofsted and the Diocese), Governors takes part in a monitoring cycle which covers all aspects of school life.

Achievement of Pupils

However, we are delighted to report that pupils taking national tests at the end of Key Stage 2 yet again achieved excellent results. These comfortably exceeded the national average results in all areas both in relation to attaining expected standards and also exceeding expectations, well done to all involved. The following table provides a summary of the results.

Notes:

1. Due to the small cohort of students within each year group, overall results may be significantly affected by small variations in individuals’ performance.
2. Teacher assessed.

PTFA

A final thank you must be provided to the members of the school PTFA committee. Curzon benefits greatly from an active PTFA committee who work hard throughout the year to deliver fundraising events that provide a number of extras for the children that would be impossible without their support. In addition to the provision of additional learning materials, subsidies for school trips and the delivery of events such as the Christmas and summer fairs, the PTFA have agreed to provide support for the construction of the multi-use games area (MUGA) that we are hoping to deliver during 2018-19. This sports facility will provide a significant enhancement for the children and enable part of the school playing field to be used throughout the year.

Andrew Small, Co-Chair