The Operations Committee is one of the less well-known working bodies of the School’s Board of Trustees. Its relatively
low profile reflects its mandate – which really comes down to two main tasks: keeping the policies of the school up to date
and coordinating reviews of various aspects of school life.
Policies deal with a huge range of issues. For example, we have a policy about how our finances are run and we have a
policy to ensure that we conform to the national smoke-free laws. There are policies setting out how cases of misbehaviour
are to be handled and policies specifying how the school should report to parents. While policies cannot cover every
situation that could possibly arise, the idea is to provide guidance in such a way as to allow fair, consistent and good
decisions to be taken. The job of the Operations Committee is to review those policies ensuring that they are up to
date (for example, they might need to be changed if there is a law change) and suitable for the needs of the school.
The Committee’s work on reviews is a very different task. Each year the Board selects some different aspect of the
curriculum to be reviewed. For example, this year, the Arts Curriculum is being reviewed. While that involves a huge
amount of work for the teachers involved, it is a really useful exercise because it means that we step back from the
day-to-day busyness of school life and look at what we are teaching and learning more holistically. The review is overseen
by the Operations Committee, and on completion, the results are presented to the Board. That way, we are all able to
continually assess ourselves to ensure that we are doing the best possible job for all our children’s learning. This year
we have also been reviewing the performance of the Board itself – surveying the community and the school staff to work
out how well other people feel we are doing our job. Although the review is not completely finished, the preliminary results
seem to indicate that we could do more in the way of communicating with the school community – explaining more clearly
what exactly it is that the Board does … so watch this space!
Treasa Dunworth
BOT member & Chair of the Operations Committee 2008