QUEEN Elizabeth’s School Governors recently held their annual January conference at the Barnfield site of the school, and explored issues to help them set the strategic direction of the school for the coming years.

The Chair of Crediton Chamber of Commerce, Tara Conabeare, attended as guest speaker, and led an inspiring session on community engagement.

Governors were particularly interested to hear about Tara’s experience of engaging with the community, and partnership working across organisations and groups to ensure that people were involved.

Governors have identified that engaging with the wider community is something they would like to improve upon over the coming months, and enjoyed exploring ideas of how to do this.

Other issues discussed included the curriculum, and what the governors would like the school to provide to the students as well as the national and local framework of what the government expects schools to provide.

The “direction of travel” from the government remains encouraging, all schools to join or form a Multi Academy Trust, so governors and the Principal Rupert Poole are keeping a close eye on this agenda.

A “MAT” is a group of schools who work together in a formal arrangement. All schools within a MAT are governed by one trust and a single board of directors.

The board of directors is responsible for decisions relating to how each school is run, but each individual school retains some version of its own governing body and the Trust delegates some of its functions to them.

QE governors believe it is essential to keep that local representation, and that they should go into any partnership in a strong and positive way to improve the outcomes for the young people of the Crediton area through formal collaboration.

Governors discussed and were very clear that QE would only consider moving into Multi Academy Trust status IF it is in QE’s best interests and certain guiding principles can be met.

These would include improved learning, outcomes and holistic opportunities for all students, effective cross phase working to involve primary and secondary schools, good staff professional development opportunities and a geographically appropriate setting.

Governors agreed that all stakeholders’ views will be sought in the exploration of this issue – staff, parents, students and the whole community, and that they will be looking to consult thoroughly on this issue soon, in as many ways as possible.

Deborah Leighton Plom, Chair of Governors, said: “Governors want to hear the views of everyone who has an interest in the school and our students.

“Our discussions with the Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, Tara Conabeare, on ways of communicating and engaging with the fantastic community of Crediton has certainly inspired us to improve how we listen and hear peoples’ views.”

Deborah also added, “If any members of the community would like to be involved with helping us run a future QE consultation then the school would be very pleased to hear from you!”

Deborah can be contacted on her school email address: [email protected] .

Alan Quick