My name is Sophie Lee and I have been a Clerk to Governors since 2012, working in Southampton schools. You can find me @askaclerk on Twitter.
My undergraduate degree from Warwick University is in English literature and I have a postgraduate diploma in journalism from Cardiff University.
My aim in establishing Ask A Clerk is to provide the kind of site that I needed when first starting out in clerking.
One of the first things I did in my new job was start a Word file filled with question after question that I needed answers to. What do you do if both the chair and vice-chair can’t attend a meeting? Can governors make decisions by email? Can governors scrap all committees if they want to?
Answers to these questions were not easy to find. The Governance Handbook is the DfE beginners’ guide to governing but it has been slimmed down so much in recent years it no longer includes the very basics such as how many governors form a quorum and whether the chair has a casting vote.
I wanted to create a site where this information was easily available and where it was provided completely free of charge.
I’m hoping this site will help governors and clerks find the information they need – the information I needed when I was starting out in clerking – without spending their precious time trawling through legislation, or amendments to legislation, or explanatory memos to legislation, or statutory guidance, or non-statutory departmental advice…