GOVERNORS and headteachers have been reminded of the corporate nature of school boards in a recent spate of articles in The TES.

We have been reminded, quite rightly, of the need to avoid situations where a chair of governors is regularly, and inappropriately, taking decisions on behalf of the governing body.

Gerald Haigh (TES, March 1) gave some good examples of inappropriate decision-making by chairs of governing bodies and noted that heads should not, routinely, ask chairs for decisions that should be taken by the whole governing body. He also advised governors to hold their chair to account for any decisions taken on behalf of the body and reminded us not to use our emergency powers lightly.

This is very welcome and timely advice for those of us operating at school level. However, there is also a need for external bodies requiring responses or actions from governing bodies to better demonstrate their understanding of the corporate nature of our work. I suspect my voice will be echoed by chairs of governing bodies across the country, in drawing attention to the number of communications I receive that require a response from the governing body before it is next due to meet. This is despite the fact that our body meets at least twice as often as is legally required. Such requests make it very difficult for the body to operate as the corporate entity intended in legislation. They also affect our ability to fulfil the strategic, support, challenge and accountability roles now widely expected of us.

Most of the correspondence that governing bodies receive comes from the Department for Education and Skills or from local education authorities, who should both be well aware of the intended corporate nature of our work and the regulations that require us to meet only once a term.

Surely these bodies should ensure that they communicate with governing bodies in a way that encourages us to operate in the corporate way intended.

Perhaps one way of ensuring this would be to have legislation that only required governing bodies to act on communications that gave them a 12-week lead-in time. This would be consistent with the 12-week minimum consultation period expected on government discussion papers. It might even help to improve the strategic planning of the organisations that require decisions or actions from us. The likelihood of such legislation is, of course, remote.

However, unless there is some mechanism introduced that ensures governing bodies are not required to take decisions in between meetings, we are likely to continue to see chairs, albeit reluctantly, taking too many decisions on their own and the corporate nature of the governing body will remain fragile.

Margaret Hunt is chair of governors at Holbrook primary, Trowbridge, Wiltshire