Monday 9^th January 2012

Dear Parents and Carers,

Parent Governor Election

I am writing to encourage you to put your name forward for election as parent governor of St Gregory’s Catholic Primary School. Becoming a parent governor offers you the opportunity to make a real contribution to the life and work of our school.

We now have a vacancy for a parent governor as Mr Adrian Heath has chosen to take the opportunity of becoming a foundation governor

School governors play a key role in the leadership of the school and work co-operatively together with each other and the staff to make sure that our school provides a challenging, supportive and safe environment for its pupils.

As a parent governor one does not represent the parents and their views but is an elected parent who is given the right to act as governor on the governing body. Being a governor can be very rewarding and will provide you with an opportunity to meet new people and gain new skills. Full induction, training and support are available from the LA and your colleagues on the governing body.

You will want to know how much time it takes.

Governors act as a team and, as such, the amount of time that each of them can give to the role will vary. Some people will be able and willing to give a lot throughout their time as a governor. Others will find that the amount of time they can give increases or reduces during that period. But if you are serious about helping our school to help children, then you do need to:

• be willing to prepare for meetings: there can be a lot of papers to read

• attend meetings: the Governing Body must meet at least once a term, but you probably will be asked to serve on at least one committee. How often this meets will vary, but it is usual for most committees to meet each term

• be able to get to meetings. Full Governing body meetings will usually be during the evening but   committee meetings may be during the day, which can be arranged for the beginning or end of the day to suit the committee members

• participate. You need to prepare for, and attend, meetings if you are to be able to help the school effectively

In order to be eligible to stand for election your child/children must be on the roll of the school and you must be proposed and seconded by parents of other children at school. Neither the proposer nor seconder should be your spouse or related to each other. Every parent is entitled to be nominated as a parent governor and to vote in a parental governor election. If more than one nomination is received, an election will be held and ballot papers for this will be sent to all parents.

The usual term of office is four years from the date of appointment. If you choose to, you can complete your term of office even if your child leaves the school.

If, as a parent, you are interested in becoming a parent governor nomination forms can be down loaded from the documents section of this school website and are available from the school office.

Completed nomination forms to be returned to the school office by Tuesday 18^th January 2012, elections will take place after.

On behalf of the Governing Body I would like to thank you for your continued support of our School and to wish you all a happy and holy New Year

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely

Anne Middleton Hill

Chair of Governors

We give schools an overall grade from 1 to 4:

n      grade 1 (outstanding)

n      grade 2 (good)

n      grade 3 (satisfactory)

n      grade 4 (inadequate).

The lead inspector reports her or his judgement to the headteacher and governors. The inspectors’ findings are published in a report for the school, parents and the wider community. The inspection report provides information about how effective the school’s work is and contains recommendations about what the school should do to improve further. The school must take all reasonable steps to make sure you receive a copy of the report. The report includes a letter to the pupils, telling them what the inspectors thought about the school and what they can do to improve it. Reports are also published on our website at www.ofsted.gov.uk/reports.

What happens if Ofsted judges a school to be ‘inadequate’?

If inspectors judge a school to be inadequate it will be placed in one of the following two categories.

Special measures

This means the school is failing to provide its pupils with an acceptable standard of education, and is not showing the capacity to make the improvements needed. Inspectors will visit the school regularly to check its progress, until it can be removed from the category. We will inspect it again after about two years.

Notice to improve

This means either:

n      the school is failing to provide its pupils with an acceptable standard of education but it does have the capacity to improve; or

n      it is not failing, but is performing significantly less well than we reasonably expect.

If we give a notice to improve, the school will receive a monitoring visit by an inspector and it will be inspected again after about a year.

What happens if I have concerns about the inspection?

Complaints are rare, but we treat them very seriously. You can find out more on our website at www.ofsted.gov.uk, or by calling our helpline on 0300 123 4234.

If you need any more information about our work, please visit our website or call our helpline.

What happens if I have concerns about my child’s school?

If you are concerned about your child’s school, you should start by talking directly to the teachers or headteacher. Or, if necessary, you can talk to the governing body or the local authority. If you are not satisfied with the responses you receive we may be able to help.

You can find out more on our website or by calling our helpline.

This document applies to all maintained schools including special schools and pupil referral units. It also covers academies, city technology colleges, city colleges for the technology of the arts and some non-maintained special schools in England.[1]

Piccadilly Gate
Store Street
Manchester
M1 2WD

Helpline: 0300 123 4234

www.ofsted.gov.uk

Published: October 2010

Reference number: 090181
© Crown copyright 2010

Kettle & Talbot are back!

For the last month the builders have been digging out the foundations for the new classrooms. There has been some disruption to our playtime routines but apart from that everything has gone very smoothly.

School newsletters

The regular school 'Gazette' can be viewed in the documents section of this website. Please view them to get the latest online news about St Gregory's.

St Gregory's Learning Platform

Much of the content of our website has been moved to our LEARNING PLATFORM site.

We have the made the PARENTS section public and you can view it at     http://public.klp.rm.com/establishments/8613488/ParentSpace