School Governance & Clerking Service

The purpose of this initial video meeting is to explain the service, familiarise ourselves with your processes and gather the information and documents that will be required to provide clerking services to your school. Here you will usually meet your allocated Judicium Clerk, the Team administrator and the Head of the Clerking & Governance Division. At this meeting, the process to agree meeting dates shall commence. 

Advice by telephone and email on governance related matters. This advice can be sought anytime during working hours and is suitable for matters that may arise pre or post governor meetings. We endeavour to reply to all questions within two working days.

Governors will receive regular email updates on major legal/regulatory or Ofsted changes that are forthcoming or are about to come into effect with a view to enabling the governing body to keep abreast of their responsibilities. We also give useful updates on clerking procedures and useful hints and tips of systems and processes to make things easier for Chairs and governors.

This includes keeping records of governing body constitution, appointments, terms of office, committee memberships, specialist roles and pecuniary interests as well as agendas, minutes, policy schedules, DBS records and other governance related documentation.

Chairs will work with the clerk to suggest items for inclusion in the agenda which will be circulated in good time for each meeting together with appropriate meeting related papers.

The assigned clerk will ‘attend’ your governors’ or committee meetings as required on mutually agreed convenient dates and be available to advise on procedural matters relevant to the meeting. Where an issue requires further research, or an answer is not immediately available, the clerk will provide an answer at a later stage.

On introduction to your allocated Judicium Clerk they will ask you to provide a list of suggested meeting dates for mutual agreement for the full academic year. Any meeting dates must be mutually agreed with your allocated clerk at this time and cannot be agreed in advance during the sales or onboarding process. When dates are mutually agreed the clerk will then ensure that they are booked in both their diary and our online diary and will ensure that they are available to attend. Should dates require changing the clerk will work with you to find another mutually agreeable date.

Meeting cancellations must be notified at least three clear working days before the meeting date. Any cancellations notified inside this window will result in the loss of the meeting. Should you need to change meeting dates, we will always endeavour to cover the new date with your assigned clerk or a substitute, but we cannot guarantee to do so. 

Approximately 10 working days following a meeting a draft set of minutes will be sent to the Chair of the meeting fo approval and a copy saved for future reference.

As part of the annual package, all governors of the school will have free, unlimited access to our clerking & governance eLearning library. This currently has several CPD accredited courses and is continuously being updated in line with available resources and governor demand.