Hi my name is Debbie Smith. I currently work with the Apprentice Team at Rolls-Royce in Derby. My role is Quality Lead and Safeguarding Champion. I attended Shelton Juniors over 40 or so years ago and both my children attended Shelton Infants and Juniors, although they are a strapping 19 and 21 years of age now.

I have been a Community Governor at Shelton since September 2012. Before that I was a Parent Governor at Merrill College for approximately 10 years. I have chosen to move to Shelton because I wanted to work with a different age group and hopefully inspire and support our Engineering Apprentices of the future. Yes we start spotting talent as early as possible!!

As a Community Governor I see my role in two parts:

(1)Helping to use my professional expertise in quality and safeguarding to support the school.

(2)Encouraging key parts of the curriculum like English, Maths, Science and ICT which are key to the future of engineering.

I also enjoy being a governor because Shelton is a school that really encourages and supports creativity and innovation, which is very rare in many schools. I can really see that the children enjoy and love getting involved in all the different activities and their enthusiasm is really catching. I also enjoy being able to come into the school to talk to the different children; at this age they are really honest and tell it as it is, which is fabulous.