Issue - meetings

To consider the report.

The Chairman of the Board introduced his report, which set out the activity that had taken place since his previous update in December.

Officers responded to comments and requests for clarification, details included:

• The Terms of Reference for the Finance Sub-Committee had recently been reviewed and had a considerable amount of work to be undertake, which meant that it was meeting approximately every six weeks.
• The Chairman of the Sub-Committee was a chartered accountant, with significant experience in education and the rest of the sub-committee’s membership were well-experienced with matters of a financial nature. The Sub-Committee was currently charged with reviewing the budget, development of the business plan and ongoing financial projections.
• Day to day financial reporting was now easily accessible, including management accounts, which had proved to be exceptionally useful.  An audit was to be undertaken at year end, and so strong desire from the Board to ensure accounts were up to date.
• Since the Head Teacher had been appointed and had been in post since January, the Managing Director could focus on the strategic aims of the school, which had not been possible beforehand as he had been overseeing the day-to-day operation of the school.
• The feedback from the staff and pupil surveys was being collated to be fed back to the Board of Directors, although initial feedback indicated that parents/carers were more engaged and that the situation at school is improving. In terms of staff results, feedback had been positive and tri-angulated with other data available.
• A committee had been established by the Board of Directors to explore opportunities for community outreach and perform the kind of ‘deep dive’ exercise that wasn’t possible in standard board meetings, which was proving to be positive in terms of engagement and developing a long-term leisure strategy that would maximise community use.
• Data surrounding the usage and financial profile would be available at the next shareholder committee and would form part of the business plan to be put forward at the next meeting of the Shareholder Committee.
• The Board was putting a huge amount of time and resource into ensuring that the school is in an inspection ready situation based on the action plan that it had submitted. The Managing Director was Confident that OFSTED would find a greatly improved school and governance structure. It was in the hands of OFSTED to determine whether standards had been consistently met, and how it was going to measure this i.e. from launch of the school, or from submission of the action plan.

Noted