2006 Homerton Roll News
Services run a number of courses: Level 1 for new Governors, level 2 for more experienced, & level 3 for those experienced ones who hold positions of responsibility within the governing body. I have found these courses both interesting, necessary & invaluable. We also each receive a termly newsletter "Governors" covering any up-to-date relevant news. There are so many changes in schools nowadays that there is plenty to keep the Governors very busy. Since September 2004 the Governing bodies had to be ³reconstituted² & as a result I then became a ³Foundation Governor². I have been on a number of sessions interviewing & appointing new staff. This I find very challenging. Recently we had 19 applicants for the Year 1 teacher¹s post & it took a long time going through all their application forms & references, before deciding on who should be called for interview. We watched all the candidates teaching before we interviewed them, and as has often happens it is very difficult to make a decision on the final two excellent candidates. We also have to deal with staff salaries, & set the budget for the financial year. Provision has to be made for SEN support. The school improvement plan has to be discussed. There are Parent/Teacher meetings to attend, school functions to support, and in 2005 I was asked to undertake the monitoring of the Headteacher¹s performance management objectives. Since the Spring Term I¹ve been nominated as the Governor to study online for training in safeguarding children & safer recruitment of staff. This is a necessary, but time consuming course run by NCSL (National College for School Leadership.} There are of course all the ongoing preparations for an OFSTED inspection. Under the new regulations the school is only given 3 days notice, so it must always be prepared! At the beginning of last Autumn Term the phone went to say the inspectors would arrive, but this time having first read the report of St Mary¹s on the internet they would only be staying one day & be arriving at 8.15 a.m. (A previous inspection some years before, was very stressful when 4 of them stayed for a week!) This time they seemed to cover everybody & all the activities in great detail. More by accident than design I found myself in for the de-briefing at the end of the day. This was a most interesting & rewarding experience as they were full of praise for the school. The three points they picked up needing improvement were given in a constructive helpful manner. I think everyone was glad that the ³new² Ofsted was a much more rewarding experience. I have now been made a mentor for a new governor, so I accompanied her to a one day course for new governors which certainly give us a great deal of information. There were about 45 people there ... many of them being new ³Parent Governors² from all around schools in Dorset.
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I have only been able to give a glimpse of what is involved in becoming a school governor, but I would recommend it to anyone who has the time as it really is a most interesting and rewarding job. Coral Harrow (Hemsley 1949-51)
From Middlesex to the USA When I completed my training at Homerton, I applied to Middlesex as an infant/nursery teacher. I was accepted and taught the reception class in Harrow – Roxeth school. There were over 50, 5 year olds in my class so it was quite a challenge. I next moved to Willesden and taught at Chamberlayne Wood Road school – top infants, then I transferred to a Church Hall annex with 4 classrooms, only 30 children per year, and I was in the reception class. I married in 1949, having met my husband at Cambridge, where he was a scientist at Christ’s College. After a year we moved to Muswell Hill as I was having a baby, and it was there that I met Eileen Mold. I had twin girls, so we needed a ground floor flat. While at the clinic in Fortis Green, I met Marjorie Bennett, and many years later, I met Marjorie again, this time on a cruise to the Norwegian fiords and have kept in touch ever since. I also keep in touch with Mona Baddeley, my college mother, Margaret Rishbeth and Liz King (friends of Mona), and also Margaret Cornes. When the twins were one year old, I was persuaded by Beatrix Tudor-Hart to join her staff at the infant-nursery school she had opened in Fortis Green. I worked with children 2 – 5 and stayed there for three years. It was at this time, my husband was offered a research job in the U.S.A. We lived in a Quaker dry town and stayed in the U.S. until the twins were 16 and our son was 9, the girls hoped to go to British Universities. They took O levels while studying in the lower 6th with A levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry. The younger twin studied chemistry at LMH, Oxford and became a cosmetic chemist and then a perfumer, while her sister was at Nottingham and studied English Language and Linguistics. She did 2 years with the V.S.O. in Sri Lanka, improving the teacher’s English, spent a year with The Boat People and then taught in a primary school. Our son became a statistician – BSc and M.Sc. Jean Walters (Davies 1945-47)