CPD & Staffing

Dealing with complaints - whether from parents, carers or community members - can be one of the most challenging aspects of school leadership. With vexatious complaints against schools and the number of instances of parents complaining on the rise, headteachers and SLT need ways of managing complaints and, crucially, preventing complaints from occurring when possible.

This checklist is designed to do exactly that and allows school leaders to review their processes in order to prevent complaints from parents but also to manage legitimate complaints carefully. It covers the following key areas:

• Complaint prevention
• What to do following the receipt of a school complaint
• Complaint investigation
• Complaint resolution
• Managing persistent, serial and vexatious complaints

Use the checklist to evaluate your current position when it comes to school concerns and complaints, such as how effectively you build and manage relationships with parents/carers and your use of communication to maintain a culture of mutual respect in school. This can help you to identify areas to develop to bolster your efforts in maintaining strong relationships and addressing concerns before they develop into a bigger issue, thus helping to prevent complaints from forming.

When complaints do occur, the checklist can support you to think about your processes in order to listen, investigate and respond to complaints in order to find a resolution for all parties. It also allows you to consider your complaints policy and whether the details in it support you, as a school leader, to deal with complaints, including complaints that are persistent, serial or vexatious. 

Looking to identify the skills and development points of an EYFS practitioner in your setting? Or perhaps you're a preschool worker, nursery assistant or a teaching assistant in a Reception class who wants to explore role-specific strengths and weaknesses as part of your ongoing development or when looking for a new role. No matter the situation, this handy pack contains exactly what you need to uncover strengths and plan for professional development & growth.

🔄 Updated for 2026

Supporting your safeguarding link governor effectively takes structure, clarity and the right tools. This pack gives you this with four fully editable resources designed to strengthen safeguarding governance in your school, whether your link governor is new to role or needs more support to be highly effective.

You'll get:

☑️ Safeguarding Questions for Governors and Trustees – 13 pages of structured questions to support meaningful collaboration between the safeguarding link governor and key school staff such as the DSL or headteacher, plus a triangulating evidence section and an action plan template to document next steps

☑️ Safeguarding Spot Check Questions for Governors – a focused set of questions that can be asked of teaching staff, support staff and further roles for safeguarding link governors to use during school visits, covering the key areas of safeguarding culture, policy and day-to-day practice

☑️ Safeguarding Report to Governors Template – a clear, structured template covering safeguarding data and commentary, giving the full governing board the insight they need

☑️ Safeguarding Link Governor Roles and Responsibilities – an editable outline of the safeguarding governor's key responsibilities, ideal for onboarding a new governor or bringing clarity to an existing role

All resources are fully editable so you can adapt them to reflect your school's context and needs.

🔒 Updated for 2026 and fully aligned to the Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit 2025

This helpful pack provides pre-populated pupil, parent and staff surveys that span all major areas of school life, giving you a broad, triangulated picture of how your school is experienced across safeguarding, behaviour, curriculum, inclusion, personal development, leadership and more. Because the questions are mapped to Ofsted's evaluation framework and designed to complement the questions inspectors ask parents, pupils and staff directly, the data you collect is immediately usable for self-evaluation and inspection readiness.

This pack gives you everything you need to plan, administer, analyse and act on stakeholder feedback across the whole school, and because the core survey templates come pre-populated with carefully considered questions, you can move from planning to distribution with minimal preparation time.

You'll get:

☑️ Three ready-to-use whole-school surveys – a pupil survey in two versions (emoji scale for younger or less confident pupils; Likert scale for older or more able pupils), a parent survey and a staff survey – all aligned to the 2025 Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit and mapped to Ofsted's key evaluation areas

☑️ Nine question and statement banks covering all major evaluation areas: achievement, attendance and behaviour, curriculum and teaching, inclusion, leadership and governance, personal development and well-being, early years, safeguarding, and post-16 provision

☑️ A survey analysis template with tally tables, open question theme tables, a summary and next steps section, and an Overall Summary Triangulation table with RAG ratings

☑️ A parent and carer survey next steps planning tool – a unique action-planning document that maps poor parent feedback to targeted routes forward and suggested audit and improvement actions 

☑️ A pre-survey checklist to guide you through each stage of the process, and four survey letter templates for communicating with parents and staff before and after the survey

☑️ A 23-page PDF guidance document covering the full survey cycle, including how Ofsted use surveys such as Parent View, and a free worked example to help you interpret and act on your results

All documents (excluding the PDFs) are fully editable so you can adapt them for your school's specific context.

Looking to identify the skills and development points of your school's attendance champion, attendance co-ordinator, attendance lead or attendance officer? Or perhaps you're a senior attendance champion who wants to explore their role-specific strengths and weaknesses as part of ongoing development or when looking for a new role. No matter the situation, this handy pack contains exactly what you need to uncover strengths and plan for professional development & growth.

In a busy school environment with pressing priorities, school accessibility can often get overlooked. However, ensuring that your school environment, provision and processes are accessible and inclusive for all is of key importance.

Designed to support school leaders to audit their current approach and evaluate their strengths and next steps, this 19-page editable School Accessibility Audit template will walk you through the following key areas:

• Leadership and governance
• Curriculum and learning
• Communication and parent engagement
• School entrance and the outdoor school site
• Rooms, corridors and lighting
• Stairs and lifts
• Toilets and changing areas
• Fire exits
• Website and information sharing
• Equality adjustments 
  

Use the audit template collaboratively with key members of your team, such as your health and safety governor, premises caretaker or site manager, special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDCo) and office staff to gather a picture of accessibility and inclusion in your school or college.

Once you've completed the audit, the template also includes a handy action plan, allowing you to document your plan for improving your facilities, processes and provision for all.