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From the Governors
As a foundation school, Thurstable operates under the guidance of a Board of Governors. The size of the governing body varies from school to school, however, and Thurstable has a total of twenty which include parent, staff, community, partnership and local authority governors. Click here to view the names of all the governors and their respective designation.
The governors are ultimately responsible for all aspects of the school and, although not directly involved in daily management, they do control the strategic direction the school takes and work very closely with the Senior Leadership Team to ensure that Thurstable remains a good school and continues to develop.
As stated above, Thurstable is a good school and the Governing Body are committed to ensuring that the high standards that already exist are maintained. Having said that, we have no intention of becoming complacent, and it is our wish and intention that Thurstable school should improve even further.
All aspects of the school are important. However, as with any institution, one has to prioritise in order to move forward. During the last year a lot of work has been done in respect of the teaching and learning aspect of school life, and the results are already becoming evident. Further Learning and Teaching development is a key priority for 2009-10 and the Head Teacher and his management team will be working hard to meet the targets that have been set.
The workings of the Governing Body are largely delegated to three committees that monitor every aspect of the school. These committees are Finance, Premises & Personnel, Curriculum and Pupil Related. In addition to serving on at least one of these committees, every governor has a ‘Link’ area of the school to support and monitor, and governors are encouraged to meet with their respective head of department regularly.
We believe that ‘Every Child Matters’ and that every child has the right to: Be Healthy, be Safe, Enjoy and Achieve, Make a Positive Contribution and Achieve Economic Well Being.
As governors we are committed to ensuring that Thurstable School continues to work to meet these rights and were pleased that Ofsted recognised our work as outstanding.
FAIR PROCESSING NOTICE – SCHOOL CENSUS 2009
Thurstable School processes personal data about its students and is a “data controller” in respect of this for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998. It processes this data to:
• support its students’ teaching and learning;
• monitor and report on their progress;
• provide appropriate pastoral care, and
• assess how well the school as a whole is doing.
This data includes contact details, national curriculum assessment results, attendance information, characteristics such as ethnic group, special educational needs and any relevant medical information.
This data may only be used or passed on for specific purposes allowed by law. From time to time the school is required to pass on some of this data to local authorities, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), and to agencies that are prescribed by law, such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), Ofsted, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), the Department of Health (DH), Primary Care Trusts (PCT), and organisations that require access to data in the Learner Registration System as part of the MIAP (Managing Information Across Partners) programme and Connexions (see below) All these are data controllers in respect of the data they receive, and are subject to the same legal constraints in how they deal with the data.
The governing body of a maintained school in England is also required by law to supply basic information to Contact Point. This only includes the name and address of the child, contact details for their parents or carers (with parental responsibility) and the contact details of the school. Contact Point is a directory that will help people who work with children and young people to quickly find out who else is working with the same child, making it easier to deliver more coordinated support.
Students, as data subjects, have certain rights under the Data Protection Act, including a general right to be given access to personal data held about them by any data controller. The presumption is that by the age of 12 a child has sufficient maturity to understand their rights and to make an access request themselves if they wish. A parent would normally be expected to make a request on a child’s behalf if the child is younger.
For students of 13 years and over, the school is legally required to pass on certain information to Connexions services providers on request. Connexions is the government's support service for all young people aged 13 to 19 in England. This information includes the name and address of the student and parent, and any further information relevant to the Connexions services’ role. However parents, or the students themselves if aged 16 or over, can ask that no information beyond name and address (for student and parent) be passed on to Connexions. If as a parent, or as a student aged 16 or over, you wish to opt-out and do not want Connexions to receive from the school information beyond name and address, then please contact the school.
Your attention is drawn to the full version (Layer 2) of the Fair Processing Notice, which gives supplementary information about the processing of student data by the organisations mentioned above, and gives greater details of how the student data is processed and the rights of parents and students. If you wish to access your personal data, or that of your child, please contact the relevant organisation in writing. Contact details for each organisation are given in the full version of this notice, which can be obtained from the following web site www.essexcc.gov.uk (click on Learning then Schools). For those students/parents where this is not practical, a hard copy can be obtained from Mrs Jenny Southworth PA to The Head Teacher.
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