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How to prepare for your next governing board meeting

Prepare fully for your governing board or local governing body meetings so you can hold your school leaders to account effectively. Use our pre-meeting checklist to stay on top of the agenda, get to grips with the critical information in the headteacher's report, and plan questions to ask.

Last reviewed on 13 March 2023
School types: All•School phases: All•Ref: 32644
Contents
  1. 1. Address action points from the previous meeting
  2. 2. Ask for agenda items to be added, if appropriate
  3. 3. Read the agenda and papers
  4. 4. Prepare to ask the right questions
  5. 5. Review policies 

You can also download the steps in this article as a quick-reference checklist:

Download: pre-meeting checklist for governors DOCX, 618.5 KB
Download

If you're looking for possible agenda items for upcoming meetings, use our autumn term, spring term, and summer term agendas to tell you what governing boards will be talking about and help you prepare questions. 

1. Address action points from the previous meeting

In the last meeting, you should have made a note of any action points that were assigned to you, and acted on them afterwards. If you haven't already, read the previous meeting's minutes and follow up on any points relevant to you as soon as possible.

You can expect to see actions such as:

If you have an action to contribute information and documents ahead of the meeting, get these to your clerk at least 2