For two years running our governing body had the AGM and produced a report for parents during the Autumn term. This never made much sense to me. Why? Because the Autumn term is when new governors are elected and often the chair can change. If this is the case, where is the sense of ownership in the annual report? The new governing body can often find itself justifying the outgoing governing body's report.

For the academic year that ended in July our governing body agreed to produce the report and hold the AGM during the last week of the summer term. That way the end of the academic year was drawn nicely to a close and governors felt a sense of ownership for their report. More importantly parents could ask questions of the present governing body. I think this worked well for us so we'll be sticking to it again this year.