Governing Body

My name is Gillian Borg and I am proud to be the Chair of Green­fields Children’s Cen­tre Gov­ern­ing Body. I have been involved in edu­ca­tion in the Lon­don Bor­ough of Eal­ing for over 30 years, most of that time in Southall at var­i­ous schools. 

Our Gov­ern­ing Body is made up of 10 Gov­er­nors rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent groups of people:-

The job of the Gov­ern­ing Body is to:-

• Give strate­gic lead­er­ship. This means that we work with staff to agree what type of a cen­tre we want Green­fields to be and we make sure that the things that we do are good early years prac­tice based on how very young chil­dren learn and develop. We must make sure that we are car­ry­ing out Gov­ern­ment and Local Author­ity ini­tia­tives. Feed­back from par­ents and car­ers also helps us to come up with the strate­gic direc­tion for Greenfields.
• Act as a crit­i­cal friend. This means that we must help the staff to reflect on what they are doing and how they are doing it, so if some­thing can be improved gov­er­nors can start that discussion.
• Hold the Cen­tre to account. This means that we must look at sys­tems, polices, pro­ce­dures, data and per­for­mance to make sure that the staff main­tain their high stan­dards and work to do the very best for all the chil­dren who attend Greenfields. 

We do not get involved in the day to day run­ning of the Cen­tre as this is the respon­si­bil­ity of Mrs. McHugh and her staff who are pro­fes­sion­ally trained to do this work. We also do not have the pow­ers to act indi­vid­u­ally as gov­er­nors; we can only carry out work as del­e­gated to us by the full Gov­ern­ing Body.

The Gov­ern­ing Body meets as a whole group once every term and the com­mit­tees also meet once a term. In addi­tion most gov­er­nors will make vis­its through­out the year to look at dif­fer­ent top­ics e.g. the build­ing, health and safety etc. and then they report back to the other gov­er­nors. As chair I visit the cen­tre at least every month.

We have a var­ied agenda at the full Gov­ern­ing Body meet­ings; we might hear reports from Mrs. McHugh and other gov­er­nors, look at the progress the chil­dren have been mak­ing, agree hol­i­day and train­ing days and con­sider how we are going to make new Gov­ern­ment and Local Author­ity plans work at the Centre.

At the Finance, Per­son­nel and Prop­erty Com­mit­tee gov­er­nors agree how many staff the Cen­tre can afford to employ, they deal with the pay and con­di­tions of staff, set a bal­anced bud­get and mon­i­tor the budget.

At the Cur­ricu­lum and Pol­icy Com­mit­tee they mon­i­tor the Centre’s annual improve­ment plan, agree poli­cies and check that the chil­dren are get­ting an appro­pri­ate curriculum.

Non con­fi­den­tial min­utes of Gov­ern­ing Body meet­ings are avail­able at the Cen­tre office if you would like to read them.

If you would like to speak to me or any of the other gov­er­nors please leave a mes­sage at the main office and we will con­tact you within two work­ing days.

All of the gov­er­nors give their time and exper­tise for free so that we can work with the Head and the staff to make sure that Green­fields con­tin­ues to be an out­stand­ing cen­tre, which is enjoyed by chil­dren, par­ents and car­ers and the wider community.

We are all thrilled to be involved in such a vibrant and excit­ing place, where peo­ple are encour­aged to flour­ish in a cre­ative atmos­phere in our won­der­ful building.

Gillian Borg