Lead Academy Committee Members Information
Lead Academy Committee Members Information
Arrangements for Lead Academy Committee members' visits can create the opportunity for individual ACMs to build up expertise in certain areas and to use ACMs’ time to best effect.
The Academy Committee should ensure that there are:
Records of Lead Academy Committee member visits;
Arrangements for reporting back to the full Academy Committee;
Staff understanding of the nominated Academy Committee member’s role;
Mechanisms in place to support the nominated Academy Committee member as required. (This is likely to be the Chair or Vice Chair of the Academy Committee)
You will get to meet the children and be shown the work that they are doing; you will have conversations with passionate and hard-working members of staff and will feel part of the school environment and community.
The main principle of effective school visits is that they should be purposeful. Your visit should focus on your relevant Lead role description and it is important that Lead Academy Committee members’ visits link with issues in the School Development Plan.
Committees – and chairs in particular – are strongly encouraged to support newer members by joining them on their first few visits. A newer member could, for example, shadow another member’s existing visit. Having more than one member come in at the same time can also reduce the work of the school in arranging and supporting visits.
Parent members should make time to visit the school as members of the committee. This means visiting other than by being at the school to drop off and pick up your children or at parents’ evenings.
ACMs are not qualified to assess standards but they may need to visit lessons in order to:
Appreciate and understand the work of the staff (teachers and support staff) and how the pupils are learning;
Be aware of the response of pupils to their work and check that the pupils are aware of what they are learning;
Be aware of resource issues;
Be able to ask appropriate questions and hold sensible discussions with the professionals;
Understand as fully as possible the meaning of the results of monitoring reported to them.
N.B. ACMs are not inspectors and are not present in a lesson to make judgements about the professional expertise of the teachers, that remains a task for the Principal and/or other education professionals. It would be inappropriate, therefore, for ACMs to:
Make judgements about the quality of teaching;
Report on the progress of individual children;
Pursue personal agendas;
Monopolise teachers’ time;
Arrive with inflexible preconceived ideas.
Confidentiality should be adhered to regarding classroom visits. Observations and comments should be shared with the teacher concerned, and with the Principal, but not with other staff or with parents. And the approach of an ACM should be to ask for explanations of anything not understood, not to make assumptions.
Reports to the Academy Committee should not identify individuals in a critical manner: This is not the role of an Academy Committee member.
Any issues highlighted by your report should be brought to the attention of the Principal as soon as possible.
Individual ACMs have differing amounts of time to commit to an exercise such as classroom visits. It is important, however, that all ACMs should try to make visits at some time, beyond that initial general visit to the school when one is newly appointed to the Academy Committee.
Lead Academy Committee members should visit in the term agreed in the Trust Board’s Annual Work Plan.
All ACMs prior to a visit will make themselves fully acquainted with Health and Safety procedures, including fire safety prior to the visit.
Arrange details of visit via the Principal.
Ensure at least one week’s notice will be provided to members of staff.
Agree purpose of visit.
Discuss the context of the lesson to be observed.
Agree role within the lesson.
Turn up unannounced.
Email staff directly
Report to Reception upon arrival and follow procedures for visitors.
Keep to the role agreed.
Keep questions for the class teacher until after the visit is over.
Please remember confidentiality.
Stick to the times and purpose agreed.
Be sensitive to the mood in the classroom and the expectations of the children.
Assume a different role.
Walk in with a clipboard.
Distract the pupils from their task.
Thank the teacher and the pupils.
Discuss the visit with the teacher at their convenience.
Complete the Visit report.
Feedback to the Academy Committee
Leave without acknowledgement.
Break rules of confidentiality.
Individual Lead Academy member role descriptions and briefings contain suggested questions can be found here:
Inclusion Lead Safeguarding Lead Curriculum Lead Pupil Achievement & Progress Lead
Stakeholder Voice & Wider Community Engagement Lead Lead ACM Visit Log (Template to use)
The list below sets out some general guidelines for questioning.
Questioning the Principal and others is the main way in which you will learn about the school, hold leaders to account and support them to reflect on their decisions. The minutes will also record the range and level of challenge in questions and this is important evidence that governance is being effective.
Those new to education or new to the Trust will understandably want to ask questions about the meaning of certain terms. In turn, leaders’ reports should be clear and accessible to committee members. It is important, however, that such questions do not feature too heavily in meetings. A glossary is provided in the appendices, which covers some of the most common terms and it is usually possible to find the meanings on the internet. Support is also available from the Clerk or the central governance team.
When posing questions at meetings or on visits, you should consider the following:
Does this question focus on impact? Committee members will receive a lot of information about the work of the school, but their concern should be for outcomes, rather than process. Wherever possible, Principals should provide objective evidence of impact (for example by referring to the data in the Principal’s Report).
Is this relevant to the agenda item? In order to keep meetings to time and focused on the main priorities, questions need to be relevant. You are encouraged to leave other questions until ‘Any other business’, after the meeting or your next visit.
Does this question help to focus the Principal or leader on an important aspect of what is being discussed? Committee members should use their questions to guide the school’s thinking and attention towards key priorities.
Is this question strategic? For example, “does the school use its lunch menus to support health and wellbeing or even the curriculum?” is a better question than “what is usually on the lunch menu?”
Does this help the committee to understand what is being discussed?
Has my question been answered? Do further questions arise from the answer? Where useful, committee members should ask follow-up questions either to clarify a response or to probe any new information.