2.5 Schools As Organisations- 2.1 Roles and responsiblities.

2.1

Roles and Responsibilities:

School Governors

Governors are responsible for making sure a school provides a good quality of education for the pupils. They promote effective ways of learning and teaching by setting the schools policies. How a governor does there job affects the teachers, pupils and how a school is viewed in the local community.
Governors would usually include local authority governors, parent’s governors, staff governors which normally would always include the head teacher, community governors who are people from the local area and sponsor governors who would represent any sponsoring bodies.
The governing body is responsible for managing the schools budget which will cover staffs salaries, maintenance, running costs and all equipment, they would decide on what type of staff should be employed including choosing a head teacher, they would be involved in choosing interview questions and sorting out applications.
Most governing bodies would be built up of different committees to deal with different roles and issues. For example a different committee for finance, admissions, health and safety, staffing and curriculum.
Governors will have an annual general meeting to report back to the parents what is going on and what they are working on.

Senior Management

A head teacher has the overall responsibility for the school, its pupils and staff and the education which they receive. The head is most senior teacher and is te leader of the primary school. The main responsibilities of a head would be to ensure that the schools teaching is up to date, training the staff, meeting health and safety requirements, keeping the school up to date for example with new technologies, working with the governors and other senior staff to employ new staff, working alongside the police and social services if need be when dealing with issues with students, completing the overall aims for the school, meeting with other head teachers and representing the school in the local community, taking the responsibility of legal matters, meeting the curriculum needs and make sure the national curriculum is taught and reporting back the schools performance to governors, the local education authority and ofsted.

A deputy head works under the direction of the head teacher. In many schools the deputy head will still teach a class. They must undertake duties set to them by the head teacher and in the event of the head being out of school a deputy head will take on the heads duties.

SENCO

Every primary school will have a SENCO. This stands for special education needs co-ordinater. In some schools the SENCO will have other responsibilities such as a teacher and in other cases they would work part time and just deal with the special education needs children. The role of a SENCO would be overlooking the general running of the schools special needs. They would work with the special education needs children one to one, advise and help the teachers and working alongside the parents of careers of any special needs children to make sure they get the best education and help possible. They provide a key role for these students helping them with day to day life at school.

Teachers

Teachers are responsible for teaching the national curriculum. They must insure that all children are developing socially as well as academically; they must report any problems they notice with a child’s behaviour, learning or social skills to an appropriate specialist. They must ensure they teach all aspects of the national curriculum and that its up to date. They monitor the progression of each student and report back to parents and carers during parent’s evenings. They must maintain and enforce discipline where necessary, motivate children to learn during lessons and prepare the pupils for later life.

Support Staff-Teaching Assistant

A teaching assistant works under the guidance of a teacher. They support both the teachers and children and help with the development of children academically and socially. They must report any problems they might pick up on to the classrooms teacher. They prepare the classroom for lessons, help the children who need extra support during lessons- working in small groups or one to one depending on the activity. They can help teachers plan activities and complete records and under a teachers direction can lead a class.

2.2

Speech Therapist

The therapists work with pupils with a range of special education needs. Normally a child’s needs would relate to: understanding, speech, expression, fluency or voice.
The role of a therapist working in a school would be assessing what the difficulty might be this would include a discussion with both parents and teachers- when the problem has been assessed they would provide support for the child aswell as supporting staff working with the child and parents, they would give the schools staff appropriate training to help the child’s needs and would make reviews of the child to review progress and what steps need to be done next.

Education Psychologist

An educational psychologist deals with children who have problems at school. The problems can be learning difficulties or social or emotional problems. The psychologist will work with the individual, the teachers and parents or carers. They assess the child’s needs through observation, working with the child one to one and discussion with teachers and would set out a learning plan to help the student.

Behaviourist

A behaviourist or behaviour analyst works closely with children with development disabilities and autism. They identify a child’s needs and provide a plan for staff and parents or carers to work with to improve the child’s behaviour and learning. They will monitor the child’s progress over a set amount of time and review different ways to solve the behaviour issues.