Volunteer Volunteer school exclusion independent review panel members

What will you be doing?

The Arthur Terry Learning Partnership is a highly successful Multi Academy Trust (MAT) encompassing 6 secondary schools, 14 primary schools, an alternative provision all-through school,  a Teaching School Hub, and School Centred Initial Teacher Training provider.  Our schools are based in North Birmingham, Tamworth, Lichfield, North Warwickshire and Coventry.  Independent panels consider requests from parents or carers to review the decision to permanently exclude their child from an ATLP school. Each panel is made up of 3 representations: A lay member, Governor and Head teacher. 

a lay member who acts as the Chair of the panel. This person will not have worked in any school in a paid capacity, disregarding any experience as a school governor or volunteer.  a school governor who has served as a governor for at least 12 consecutive months in the last five years, provided they have not been teachers or headteachers during this time.   a headteacher or individual who has been a headteacher within the last five years.

In order to be fair and impartial, none of the Panel can serve if they have a connection to the child/parent or the school. What will I be doing?

Sit on independent exclusion review panels for the benefit of children, parents and ATLP schools. Ensure that parents feel they have had a fair and independent hearing and been given every opportunity to put their case and that the points they have made have been taken seriously and carefully considered. Ensure parents feel that their review has been handled competently, fairly and within the law.

What are the possible decisions of the panel? The independent review panel can either:

agree with the governors’ decision recommend that the governors reconsider their decision, or “quash” the decision (reject it because it is invalid) and direct governors to reconsider. The decision will only be quashed if there was a flaw in the way the original panel came to their conclusions.

What are we looking for?

Volunteers for this role should meet one of these three categories:

A lay member to chair the panel that has not worked in a school or trust in any capacity, but has the ability to manage meeting room dynamics, deploy critical thinking, understand processes and statutory guidance, and have emotional intelligence. Knowledge of SEND would be advantageous. An experienced Headteacher An experienced school governor (maintained school) or trustee (multi-academy trust) 

What difference will you make?

Joining the ATLP Independent Review Panel pool will support our Trust in delivering our statutory responsibilities to students in a fair, transparent and time sensitive way. We know from the 'CORAM Unfair Results: Pupil and parent views on school exclusion report' (2019) that 82% parents and 18% students feel that their school's suspension or exclusion process is unfair. The ATLP seeks to build a standing pool to ensure that we do everything everything possible to ensure that these processes are fair and transparent, the maintenance of a standing pool of panellists will help support us in this aim. During the 2022-23 academic year, the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership did not receive any requests for an independent review of pupil exclusions. Although reviews aren’t frequently requested, they have gone up in number across the country and we need a healthy pool of members we can call on to help us meet our statutory deadlines, as reviews must take place within 15 school days upon receipt of a request. We currently have a number of willing volunteers in the Lay Member category but seek further individuals to support in the panel categories of Headteacher and School governor.