School Governance

Governance within a Multi-Academy Trust

Shipham CE First School is part of the Wessex Learning Trust, a multi-academy trust that is responsible for a number of academies across Somerset. Governance for a multi-academy trust operates at two levels. 

At trust level, there are Trustees.  The Trustees are accountable to the Department for Education and external government agencies, including the Charity Commission, for the quality of the education the trust provides and the effective use of the associated academy funding. They are required to have systems in place through which they can assure themselves of quality, financial probity, safety and good practice.

The Department for Education’s Academy Trust Handbook sets out the Trust’s responsibilities regarding governance – Academy trust handbook 2024 (publishing.service.gov.uk)

At a local level, each academy has a Local Partnership Board (LPB) comprising of governors with different areas of expertise and responsibilities.  Governors are responsible for holding Headteachers and their leadership teams to account for the quality and effectiveness of the academic experience of the students under their care with the aim of securing effective school improvement.  They do this through monitoring performance against an annual academy improvement plan, through monitoring risks and responses to risks, and by overseeing systems and processes for the safeguarding of children and the health, safety and wellbeing of academy staff.

In addition The Trust brings opportunities for:

• broader learning and social experiences
• sharing of good practice across schools
• a strengthening of the already successful transition experience for pupils moving from our first schools to their future schools
• further development of the standard of teaching and learning across all schools
• each school to operate more efficiently through the sharing of resources and expertise
• joint staff training

Our school LPB is chaired by Adrian Warman. Adrian can be contacted via the school email, postal address or telephone. Click here for our contact details.

Contacting the Wessex Learning Trust

Telephone: 01934 745363
Email: office@wessexlearningtrust.co.uk

Address:

The Wessex Learning Trust
Station Road
Cheddar
Somerset
BS27 3AQ

Adrian Warman - Chair of the Local Partnership Board

I have been a governor with the first school in Shipham since 2012 and find it to be a worthwhile and rewarding role, contributing directly to the quality of early education on which local children and their families rely. I am privileged to now be Chair to the joint local governing body across both Shipham and Draycott & Rodney Stoke schools – an arrangement which mirrors and supports the joint Headteacher.

I live in Shipham, with two older children in Wessex Learning Trust academies and believe the schools, with close collaboration across the Cheddar Valley, are a central part of our communities. I genuinely value the hard work and dedication of staff focused to deliver excellent teaching and learning for each individual pupil and appreciate the strong link with the Church which supports a caring culture and instils a sense of social responsibility and belief.

I encourage the wide variety of sport, music and extra-curricular or enrichment opportunities which can so often enhance our children’s experience of school, allowing them to recognise their potential and be excited about learning.

Kirk Purnell - Vice Chair

I have worked in education in various forms for the entirety of my career, from my first collaborative venture setting up a gymnastics club in a local primary school at 17 to my current position as Director of Teaching, Learning and Assessment at a large, multi-site Further Education College. My experience in education has taken me around the world and offered a huge range of different experiences in secondary, Further and Higher Education, private language schools and even offender learning in prisons education, all offering a broad range of perspectives and insight.

Since moving to Draycott I have been keen to take an active role in the community and I see the support of our local primary schools as key to this. It is a great privilege to be able to have a guiding hand in the education of our young people and to support these schools to be the best they can be - and to ensure the best in education for my own young daughter when the time comes!

Thea Oliver

My name is Dorothea but the only people who call me that are the bank and the taxman!

Please call me Thea.

I was born in Cardiff and am very proud of my Welsh heritage.

I am part of a very close and supportive family, I have been wife to Richard for 42 years (yes, I was a child-bride!) Richard is a governor at The Kings of Wessex Academy. I am mother to Christian (who is a governor at Lympsham Church of England VC First School), Morgan (who is a governor of at school in north London where he lives), and Mary who works at Shipham Church of England VC First school. I am granny to Henry, Audrey and Hamish who are all attending schools within the Wessex Learning Trust, as did my own children.

I am an animal lover, and I am owned by a very vocal Siamese... so as a means of daily escape I spend quality time walking on the levels with my mostly-Labrador.

Nursing was my teenage vocation and I continue to work three days a week at Wells Health Centre.

We have lived in Draycott near Cheddar for over 30 years and St Peter’s Church has been central to our lives since moving to the village.

I am called to serve as “locally ordained focussed priest” in the Benefice of Cheddar, Draycott and Rodney Stoke. As such my church work is part-time and I am financially self-supporting.

I really enjoyed my time as foundation governor of Draycott & Rodney Stoke First School when my own children attended the school in the 1990s & I find I’m enjoying it just as much now I have returned wearing my clerical collar!

Tim Starke 

I am delighted and proud to join the Local Partnership Team in for Draycott and Rodney Stoke and Shipham First Schools. My 3rd child is a pupil at DRS, and I feel it would be great to give  something back to this fantastic school. Having recently moved to the area from Kent, I have  already been a governor in another school for over 3 years and it felt right to step forward when a  call for parent governors was requested. During my time with a child at Draycott, I have been  amazed at the caring, nurturing nature of all the teaching and support staff at and the passion of  everyone I have encountered.

I come from a corporate background and my experience managing commercial relationships and marketing in a global, fast-moving consumer goods company, will enable me to support the school and look at things with a fresh pair of eyes.

Sam Macphail

I have recently become a Local Partner but my passion for people and education is long standing.   As a qualified and experienced lecturer at a local FE college my understanding of the educational environment helps in my role at Shipham and Draycott. 

I care deeply about the schools now and in the future and want to have a positive impact. The schools are an intrinsic part of village life and its legacy will impact upon generations of children for years to come. I’m inspired to protect existing good practice and ensure that all the amazing elements that make these schools so special continues to improves and flourish just as the children do. 

As a professional Photographer and Artist,  I am very creative with lots of imaginative ideas and am good at observing school life and instinctively feeling how a place is working.  As a photographer I have also visited many schools in the trust and have been inspired by how they make the school such an engaging environment.   Shipham has a place in my heart. I have always wanted to live here and be part of the community and we moved just before my son started school here in 2019.  I watched my eldest son thrive in this nurturing and safe environment with the most special outside space and wonderful staff.  Now my youngest son is in reception and I can see the spark of excitement in his eyes when he tells me about his day and the new things that he has learnt. 

I hope that I can make a difference as a Local Partner.

Jenny Rintoul 

Jenny Rintoul is Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students across art and design subjects. Jenny co-leads the UWE Visual and Material Practices Research Group, which is a group of cross-disciplinary writers, makers and thinkers interested in visuality and materiality. Her research on art and design education focuses on constructions of theory and practice, tacit and embodied ways of knowing, and demystifying ‘intuition’ and ‘integration’ in art education discourse. Previously, Jenny worked in dance, gallery education and in FE teaching Art and History of Art A levels, and Critical and Contextual Studies to Musical Theatre, Performing Arts, and Art & Design BTEC students.

Clerk to Governors - Jo Tasker

jtasker@shiphamfirst.co.uk