Away from work

The work

A link governor takes one area and goes deep on it, so the board hears something better than a summary. Mine are special educational needs and where pupils actually end up after school.

For SEND that means testing whether needs are identified early enough and whether support reaches the pupils who need it, rather than accepting that provision exists. For destinations it means benchmarking outcomes against comparable schools rather than against the school’s own ambition, and turning that into decisions the board can act on.

Where the school stands

Ofsted inspected on 30 April and 1 May 2024 and judged the school Outstanding in every category, as it had at the previous inspection. On special educational needs the inspection found pupils’ needs are well identified, and that those pupils and their parents speak highly of the support they receive.

Academic outcomes have kept improving over the same period. The school’s Attainment 8 score rose across each of the last three years while the national average stayed flat, and 75% of leavers go on to top-third universities, against 19% nationally.

OfstedBishop Vesey’s Grammar School: Outstanding, inspected 30 April 2024Read the report →

What it does

Vietnamese Family Partnership, or Gia Đình Việt, is a grassroots charity based in Deptford. It helps people into training and employment, runs supplementary education for children and adults, supports health and wellbeing, and keeps Vietnamese language and heritage alive for a community that mostly arrived as refugees.

The role

I chair the board of trustees. Small charities rarely fail for lack of purpose; they fail on governance, funding cycles, and succession. Most of what a chair does is make sure the unglamorous parts hold, so the people doing the actual work can keep doing it.

Income has more than doubled over the last five years, with the step change in the year to March 2024.

Charity CommissionVietnamese Family Partnership (Gia Dinh Viet), registered charity 1183593See the register →

I like it for the same reason I like operating work. The feedback is honest, it accumulates slowly, and there is no way to talk your way past a session you didn’t do.