Clear and accurate minutes should record the actions, discussions and plans of the governing body without giving a verbatim account of the meeting.
Minutes Templates
Downloadable minutes templates are available on my templates and letters page, including a confidential minutes template labelled with a watermark.
Recording Decisions, Questions and Actions
The most important function of minutes is to record the decisions that governors make, the way that governors challenge and support leaders and the actions that governors have agreed to take.
When recording decisions the clerk can use phrases such as “Governors voted in favour of the proposal”, “Governors agreed to x”, “Governors approved y” or “Governors ratified the behaviour policy”. Minutes are written in the past tense.
If there has been a discussion before the decision the clerk needs to summarise the key points in favour or against and show how the board arrived at their conclusions.
When recording questions try to incorporate clarification questions into the main text of the minutes so you only highlight challenging questions from governors, not every single question that is asked in a meeting.
For example, if the behaviour policy is being discussed and a governor asks the headteacher to explain how detentions are used, that it is a factual question. The clerk should write “Detentions are given for x, y and z behaviours following a warning from the teacher.”
If a governor asks “Why have detentions increased by 50% in year 10 and how are you addressing these behaviour issues?” that is a challenging question. The clerk should write “A governor asked…” or “A governor questioned why Y10 detentions have risen by 50% and how these behaviour issues are being addressed.”
How should votes be minuted?
In most cases the votes of individual governors are not recorded, so the clerk will use wording like “governors voted in favour of spending £20,000 on PCs” or “governors approved the behaviour policy”.
The clerk can write that the vote was unanimous or by majority but does not have to, although it may be wise to do so for a vote that could be controversial, for example converting to an academy.
I am occasionally asked to minute that a governor has abstained from a vote or wishes to have their vote against an item recorded. However, governors make decisions collectively and share responsibility for those decisions, whether they voted in favour of them or not.
Tips For Writing Good Minutes
- Record the school name, date, time and whether it is a full governing body meeting or committee.
- Tell us who is in the room and whether they are a governor, associate member, clerk or guest. I write “Governors present”, “Associate members present” and finally “In attendance” to cover the clerk and any guests. Tell us who the chair and vice-chair are and include job titles for school employees or guests.
- Make it clear if anyone leaves the meeting early (or comes in late) so that you can prove there was a quorum present when decisions were made. Record if anyone withdraws from the meeting temporarily due to a conflict of interest. If the meeting was not quorate at any stage make that clear.
- The governing body should be asked to approve minutes of the last meeting. This is followed by “Matters arising” where any issues related to the last meeting are discussed.
- Include action points with the name of the person responsible for each action and a deadline.
- Include an item called “Declarations of interest” to allow for conflicts of interest to be minuted.
- Use a numbering system for each item. Some schools use a system where every item discussed over an entire year is numbered in sequence; for example item 1 in January would be 2020/1 and item 78 in March would be 2020/78. I think this is needlessly complicated and just use 1, 2, 3 etc.
- Record the apologies that were received and whether they were accepted.
- Number every page like this: “Page 1 of 8”, “Page 2 of 8” etc so you know if one goes missing (or gets stuck in the photocopier).
- Include a space at the bottom of each page for the chair’s signature. The chair should sign the first page and initial the remaining pages.
Should governor names be included?
That is up to your individual school. The governing body holds collective responsibility so some people think the clerk should not include names, instead writing “A governor suggested” or “two governors asked for further data on x”.
The disadvantage of this is that it can be difficult to see if any governors are struggling to make a contribution to meetings. It may also be inappropriately vague – if the link governor for safeguarding is raising concerns about a safeguarding issue then that is relevant information to note.
What should be confidential?
A separate article covers confidential minutes but the short answer is that the governing can decide to make any item confidential, particularly if it refers to a named pupil or staff member. These minutes may still be requested under freedom of information law.
Confidential minutes are often called part II minutes and should be clearly marked as confidential with a watermark or prominent title (or both). Some schools also like to print them on a different colour paper (often pink for some reason) to make it really obvious.
Do working parties need to be minuted?
No. The term “working party” or working group is used to describe an informal group of governors who meet to discuss a specific issue. A working party is not a formal committee and has no delegated power, so minutes do not have to be kept.
However, the governing body should agreed to form the working party and the governors involved should report their conclusions back to the board.
Who approves draft minutes?
It is common practice for the clerk to send draft minutes of the full board to both the chair and the headteacher for approval before sending the draft out to all governors. Draft committee minutes are usually sent to the headteacher and chair of that committee.
However, the whole board must approve the final version of full board minutes and can over-rule any changes made by the head or chair. Committee minutes can be approved by that committee.
How should minutes be amended?
If governors ask for an amendment the clerk can either do this by hand at the meeting or on a computer later. Handwritten amendments are only suitable for very minor mistakes (a missing word, for example) and even then do not look very professional, so I recommend editing minutes electronically and asking the chair to sign the amended version at the next meeting.
Should minutes be colour-coded?
It is fairly common to see coloured fonts or yellow highlighting in minutes, usually to draw attention to actions, questions or decisions. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I have seen minutes where half the text was in different colours and this may not be appropriate for a professional document.
Often boards like to highlight support and challenge in the minutes to ensure their OFSTED inspector sees it. That’s fine, but you must make sure the minutes are just as intelligible without the colour-coding, because your inspector might be colour-blind!
What is the difference between ratification and approval?
There’s no difference in this context – to ratify and to approve both mean that governors have voted in favour of the proposal, or the policy, or the spending or whatever item is being discussed.
I have seen some minutes where the clerk writes that a committee has approved a proposal and it will now go to the full governing body for ratification, but in my view that’s just creating confusion.
The word “ratify” is sometimes used this way in politics – a team will negotiate and approve a treaty that is then officially ratified by the prime minister – but for governors you just need to know who has the power to vote in favour or against.
Either the committee has the delegated authority to vote in favour of the proposal or it does not. If it has no power to vote on it the committee will just be recommending that the full board approves it, they are not actually capable of making the decision themselves.
If the committee does have the power to vote on it then that vote should not be duplicated at a full board meeting as that defeats the whole point of delegation.
How quickly should minutes be produced?
There’s no set timescale but it would be reasonable for the clerk to send draft minutes to the head and chair within seven to 10 days of the meeting date.
How long should minutes be kept for?
Your school or academy trust should have a data retention policy which outlines how long documents should be kept, so check to see if your policy sets a retention period for governance documents.
If there is no retention policy in place your LA may be able to provide a model policy. If not, the Information and Records Management Society (IRMS) produces a Schools Toolkit on which a retention policy could be based.
The IRMS toolkit advises that minutes from maintained schools are generally kept for as long as the school remains open. However, if someone makes a request to see minutes from previous years then local authorities only have to provide copies from the last 10 years.
The IRMS advise that this rule applies equally to both minutes and any papers or reports discussed at the meeting.
Can minutes be stored electronically?
There’s no reason why you can’t scan signed minutes and file the original hard copy, but if you want to go fully digital and throw away the paper original completely I would check with your local authority or academy trust/auditors before doing so. Your school may also have a retention policy that states how documents should be stored so check that too.
I can’t see any reason why papers and reports need to be kept as hard copies because a printout of the digital file will be exactly the same as the original paper copy.
Can minutes be signed digitally?
Probably, although I haven’t been able to find definitive evidence from the DfE or OFSTED that they approve of electronically signed minutes.
The law for maintained schools just refers to minutes being “signed” so it comes down to whether an electronic signature is legal. The answer to that seems to be yes but with some caveats.
Model articles for academies (June 2021) specifically say that “references to a document being ‘signed’ includes those signed electronically” so any academies using these articles can certainly use digital signatures. Earlier articles just refer to minutes being “signed”, so again it depends on whether an electronic signature is allowed within that definition.
In April 2021 the National Governance Association posted a blog that said boards should take advantage of new practices used in the pandemic period. They gave an example of abandoning ink signatures because the pandemic proved that “an electronic signature would suffice”, so they seem comfortable with digital signatures.
“Many will not be rushing back to the use of ink for signing documents when the last twelve months have proved that an electronic signature would suffice.”
National Governance Association blog
The online admin system GovernorHub offers a way to sign documents remotely. So many governing bodies use GovernorHub that it is difficult to imagine a board getting into trouble just because they were using this feature.
If your school does not subscribe to GovernorHub you could scan the signature into a jpg or use software such as DocuSign. There is also a signature system built in to Microsoft Word.
Can meetings be recorded electronically?
Yes, meetings can be taped if the governing body are happy for that to happen. I digitally record my meetings because it helps me produce accurate minutes, particularly when governors are asking complex questions or accidentally talking over each other. I use a cheap Sony dictaphone but most smartphones can easily record voices these days.
You do need to ask for the board’s permission before you do this, but I can tell you that an OFSTED inspector was impressed when the governors at one of my schools told him that their meetings were recorded for accuracy! (The final OFSTED report described the minutes as “detailed” and said they recorded many examples of governor challenge and subsequent actions taken.)
It’s probably not necessary to have a protocol or policy that covers these recordings, but bear in mind that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to any personal data, which means data that identifies a living person. This will apply to most sets of minutes.
Guidelines for schools state that “personal data should be kept for no longer than is necessary for the purpose for which the data are processed”. For minutes it would be reasonable to keep the recording until governors have approved the minutes as an accurate record and they been signed by the chair.
Who takes minutes in the clerk’s absence?
One of the governors or trustees (but not the headteacher) can take minutes if the clerk is unable to attend. This is covered in more detail in a separate article on attendance and absence.