Who takes the minutes?

The Guide to the Law for School Governors states that:

"It is the responsibility of the Clerk of the Governing Body to...attend meetings of the Governing Body and ensure minutes are taken" (Section 57).

This means that it is usually the responsibility of the Clerk to Governors to take meeting notes at full Governing Body meetings.

However, should a Clerk be absent from the meeting, a Governor (but not the Chair, Headteacher or any Staff Governor) can be called upon to take the minutes of the meeting.

The Clerk may be tasked with taking minutes at committee meetings. However, a Governor may also be nominated to do this.

The clerk must ensure that

1. minutes are drawn up

2. minutes are approved by the Governing Body

3. minutes are signed by the Chair at the next meeting.

Ofsted and Meeting Minutes

The agendas and minutes of Governing Body meetings are sources of evidence to Ofsted. They use these to support their judgements of how well Governors discharge their duties.

The agendas and meeting notes must be used to document:

• the way the Governors exercise their strategic view, critical friend and accountability roles

• how well they fulfil their statutory duties • how they help to shape the direction of the school • their knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the school and

understanding of the challenges it faces • whether appropriate priorities for development and improvement are

set • how well they have responded to previous inspection findings • how Governors find out for themselves how things are going • whether or not they take responsibility for strong and weak aspects

of the school

Minutes are a series of short notes taken throughout the meeting as a factual record of what has been discussed.

While they should be brief, they should be comprehensive and take into account all the main issues, conclusions and decisions drawn from the discussions.

Well-presented, clear, and concise minutes will show whether the meeting met its objectives!

Whoever is recording the minutes should do so in a clear, unbiased and completely objective manner. They must write them in the past tense.

The minutes should make complete sense when being read many years after the meeting took place

Why meeting minutes must be effective

When our meetings aren't effective, we waste valuable time figuring out what we are trying to accomplish with them.

When our meeting minutes aren't effective, we waste the time we spent in meetings. Without good meeting notes or minutes, we may not remember or recognise:

1. What we decided in the meeting

2. What we accomplished in the meeting

3. What we agreed to in terms of next steps (action items)

Types of minutes

Action minutes are a succinct description of the meeting's results. Discussion minutes flesh out the actions.Verbatim minutes are a word-for-word record of a meeting.

All minutes should include any handouts or other reports given to the participants.

Action minutes:1. are the most common form of minutes used. 2. record the decisions reached and the actions to be taken, though not recording

the discussion that went into making the decisions.

Discussion minutes:are lengthy and may include information which is not essential to the focus of the

meeting.

Verbatim minutes:like transcripts, are a record of every single word said at a meeting. They are often long and can be difficult to skim for a particular piece of information.