St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School Governing Body:

Chair: Mr Marc Miell

Contact Address: St Anthony's School, Primate Road, Titchfield Common, PO14 4RP

The three core functions of a governing body, as reflected in Ofsted’s inspection criteria are:

• Setting vision, ethos and strategic direction, engaging stakeholders, and ensuring statutory duties are met;
• Holding heads to account for teaching, achievement, behaviour and safety; challenging and strengthening leadership; contributing to school self-evaluation; and
• Ensuring financial solvency and probity with effective management of financial resources, including the Pupil Premium, to raise standards.

They are also responsible for specific actions such as ensuring that there is a procedure in place for handling complaints; approving the school budget; and appointing the headteacher.

Our governing body has three sub-committees: Standards and Admissions, Resources and ICT.

• Standards and Admissions is chaired by Clare Belli;
• Resources is chaired by Brian Stoker;
• ICT is chaired by Nick O'Donnell.

Please see the report at the bottom of this page for details of how many meetings each governor attended, pecuniary interests and an annual statement.

St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School is an Academy within The Catholic Academy Trust in South Hampshire.

Academies are publicly-funded independent schools that provide a first-class education.

What’s different about academies?

Freedoms

Academies benefit from greater freedoms to innovate and raise standards. These include:

• freedom from local authority control
• the ability to set their own pay and conditions for staff
• freedoms around the delivery of the curriculum
• the ability to change the lengths of terms and school days.

Funding

Academies receive the same level of per-pupil funding as they would receive from the local authority as a maintained school, plus additions to cover the services that are no longer provided for them by the local authority. However, academies have greater freedom over how they use their budgets to best benefit their students.

Academies receive their funding directly from the Education Funding Agency (an agency of the Department for Education) rather than from local authorities.

Governance

The principles of governance are the same in academies as in maintained or Voluntary Aided schools, but the governing body has greater autonomy. The composition of the Governing Body is laid down in the Academy Trust Articles of Association.

… and what’s the same

Admissions, special educational needs and exclusions

Academies are required to follow the law and guidance on admissions, special educational needs and exclusions as if they were maintained schools.

Collaboration

Academies have to ensure that the school will be at the heart of its community, collaborating and sharing facilities and expertise with other schools and the wider community.

The Academy Trust

The Catholic Academy Trust in South Hampshire has been set up as a multi academy model, with St Anthony’s as the sole Academy school currently within the Trust.

As a result all Governors are Directors of the Academy Trust, and the Board of Directors act also as the Local Governing Body.

The Catholic Academy Trust in South Hampshire is formed of:

MEMBERS                   Canon Michael Dennehy

                                    Right Reverend Philip Egan

                                    Reverend Paul James Smith

DIRECTORS                 3

Must always be a majority of 2 Foundation Governors

The Members, similar to company shareholders, have no direct involvement in the running of the Academy Trust, however they do have oversight and one of their principal responsibilities is to ensure the Catholic ethos of the Academy Trust and the Academy schools is maintained on behalf of the Bishop.

Freedom of information

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (2000) applies to academies as it does to maintained and Voluntary Aided schools.