ABSTRACT
Governors of boarding schools where pupils come from a wide area, often far from the school, have usually little direct contact with parents. A governors' newsletter would inform parents in a relaxed style about the sort of decisions they have made. An appointment could be made to meet the contact governor at Speech Day or parents' evenings or just be a friendly voice at the end of the telephone. National government and subsequently the media have begun to publish so-called league tables of schools, based very largely on results in public examinations and the Standard Attainment Tests which all maintained school pupils must take. Some independent schools can live quite happily with the stress on academic achievement. Others need consistently to counteract it through their general marketing strategies and dealings with the media. 'Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats' analyses work best only when governors and staffs are brutally frank and objective about their school.
