Leadership and Governance Resources

🎒Updated for the 2025-2026 academic year

Conduct a thorough audit of your school's mental health and wellbeing provision with this comprehensive toolkit designed specifically for school leaders.

Reflecting current expectations and DfE guidance on mental health in schools, this pack gives you everything you need to evaluate your provision, identify gaps and create an actionable improvement plan.

You'll get:

☑️ Full editable audit tool (38 pages) – comprehensive questions covering pupil wellbeing, staff mental health, PSHE delivery, pastoral support systems, early intervention, partnerships with external agencies and whole-school culture

☑️ Supporting templates – action plan to prioritise your findings, document checklist to gather evidence, question bank to support your work with stakeholders, and one-page summary template for reporting to governors or trustees

☑️ 18-page mental health audit guidance – step-by-step instructions on planning and conducting your audit, including what evidence to gather, who to involve and how to approach this sensitive area systematically

All templates are fully editable so you can adapt them for your school's specific context, whether you're a small primary, large secondary or special school.

🔎 Want a closer look? Click here to preview the audit pack🔗 

👉 This audit pack is part of our Complete School Leadership Audit Set, which includes eleven audits in one purchase, saving you money whilst ensuring you can evaluate your entire school provision across all Ofsted evaluation areas plus three essential good practice audits.

🔒 Fully aligned with the Ofsted 2025 School Inspection Toolkit

This ready-to-use SEF template takes the complexity out of school self-evaluation, providing clear frameworks and prompts that reflect how inspectors actually assess schools against the 2025 Ofsted Inspection Framework. Designed specifically for headteachers, deputy heads, and senior leadership teams who need efficient, evidence-based evaluation tools.

What you get in the pack

Two comprehensive documents that work together:

☑️ Self-Evaluation Form Template Complete editable evaluation framework with detailed prompts for all evaluation areas, evidence source suggestions for each section, and structured format ensuring comprehensive coverage. Fully editable to save hours of formatting time covering the following areas:

• Safeguarding - comprehensive prompts covering culture, policies, training, and multi-agency working
• Inclusion - SEND provision, disadvantaged pupils, pupil premium strategy, and accessibility
• Curriculum and Teaching - curriculum design, sequencing, assessment, and professional development
• Achievement - progress tracking, foundational knowledge, and outcomes analysis
• Attendance and Behaviour - culture, expectations, intervention strategies, and data analysis
• Personal Development and Well-being - PSHE, careers education, character development, and life preparation
• Leadership and Governance - strategic planning, performance management, and stakeholder engagement
• Early Years - EYFS curriculum, assessment, and transition planning (where applicable)
• Post-16 Provision - study programmes, careers guidance, and progression outcomes (where applicable)

☑️ Ofsted Grade Descriptor Grids Current grade descriptors aligned to the latest inspection toolkit, helping you accurately assess performance against the standards inspectors actually use.

• Quality of Education
• Behaviour and Attitudes
• Personal Development
• Leadership and Management
• Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (if applicable to your setting)
• Sixth-Form Provision (if applicable to your setting)

Perfect for headteachers planning and reviewing their SIP, senior leaders conducting annual reviews, or governing bodies seeking structured evaluation processes. It's particularly valuable for new headteachers or leadership teams wanting to ensure comprehensive coverage of all inspection areas or those wishing to refine their SEF writing process.

👉 For those seeking deeper guidance on how to write a SEF, our School Evaluation and Improvement Pack is also available - it contains this editable SEF template too, plus templates for writing a school improvement plan, full PDF guidance and further supportive resources. If you're thinking about your SEF as part of Ofsted preparation, it's available in the full Ofsted Inspection Preparation Pack too.

🔄 Updated for 2026

Safeguarding governors need to do more than review data at termly meetings – they also have a role in checking, in the moment, that safeguarding culture, policy and practice are working as they should day to day. These spot check questions give safeguarding link governors a practical tool for doing exactly that.

Whether dipping into a specific area of practice, having a quick conversation with a member of staff or checking that procedures are being followed on the ground, this template provides ready-to-use questions for governors to use during informal visits and spot checks in school.

You'll get:

☑️ Safeguarding Spot Check Questions – a focused set of questions for safeguarding link governors to use during school visits, covering the key areas of safeguarding culture, policy and day-to-day practice

Fully editable so you can adapt it to reflect your school's context and priorities.

👉 This set of questions is also available in the larger Safeguarding Link Governor Support Pack, which has a set of deeper, more strategic set of safeguarding questions, a safeguarding report to governors template and a roles and responsibilities document.

🔒 Fully aligned to the Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit 2025

This comprehensive audit pack helps headteachers, senior leaders and trust leaders evaluate their entire provision across eleven key areas in one purchase. Supporting whole-school self-evaluation, strategic improvement planning and effective delegation across leadership teams, it provides everything you need to audit all aspects of your school's provision.

You'll get eleven complete audit packs in one purchase:

☑️ All eight evaluation areas schools could face under an Ofsted inspection – Safeguarding, Inclusion, Curriculum and Teaching, Achievement, Personal Development and Well-Being, Attendance and Behaviour, Leadership and Governance, plus Early Years (primary version) or Post-16 Provision (secondary version)

☑️ Three essential good practice audits – Mental Health and Welfare, Equality and Diversity, and Health and Safety to support comprehensive school improvement beyond inspection requirements

☑️ Six tools within each audit pack – Full editable audit document, action plan template, document checklist, comprehensive question bank, one-page summary and editable grade descriptor grid

☑️ Updated 100+ page PDF guidance – Comprehensive information on all evaluation areas plus practical guidance on auditing provision effectively

☑️ Strategic delegation made simple – Distribute different audits across SLT members, middle leaders and other staff in key roles to build comprehensive understanding of your setting's strengths and development areas

All templates are fully editable so you can adapt them for your school's specific context.

Ideal for headteachers, executive heads, principals, senior leadership teams and academy trust leaders wanting comprehensive school evaluation, strategic improvement planning and effective leadership delegation across all key areas.

🔎 Want a closer look? Click here to preview the audit pack🔗 

Select whether you need the primary or secondary pack below 👇

🔒 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.

🔒 Fully aligned with Ofsted 2025 School Inspection Toolkit

This Headteacher's Report to Governors template is ideal for school leaders who are seeking a little extra support when considering what to include in their termly report to the governing body and how to best present information about the school's successes and challenges. 

The HT report to governors template is carefully structured so you can report back to your governing board and give them an overview across a wide range of areas, including:

• A summary of the term
• Pupil information, including numbers on roll, leavers, admissions and details of those in receipt of pupil premium (free school meals)
• Attendance
• SEND and Inclusion
• Safeguarding, behaviour and welfare, including suspensions, exclusions and bullying
• Curriculum and teaching, including outcomes from monitoring and staff CPD
• School improvement visits
• Staffing and personnel updates
• Health and safety 

The 15-page template is fully editable, so you can add or remove details depending on your school's context.

Ensuring that your governors know the school well is a vital part of the leadership and management of any setting. As such, this template can also be found as part of our Reports to Governors Template Bundle and our Ofsted Preparation Pack, which support school leaders with understanding and preparing for the inspection process. A separate Annual Safeguarding Report to Governors template is also available to help you to work effectively with your governing board.

For DSLs and headteachers who need a structured, comprehensive way to report on safeguarding across the school to their governing board.

You'll get:

☑️ Annual Safeguarding Report to Governors – a fully editable 13-page Word document covering:

• safeguarding overview and culture
• safeguarding governor visit overview
• DSL and deputy DSL details and training
• safer recruitment information
• staff safeguarding training including Prevent duty
• induction procedures for new starters, volunteers and visitors
• alternative provision safeguarding arrangements
• Single Central Record (SCR) summary and compliance
• curriculum provision and safeguarding teaching
• space for narrative on pupil voice on safety and help-seeking, child-on-child abuse and whole-school culture, online safety filtering and monitoring including AI tools and cyber security
• referrals and cases including numbers of children in need plans, child protection plans, CME, LADO and Prevent/Channel referrals
•  allegations against staff and low-level concerns
• specific safeguarding risks covering a comprehensive range of risk areas
• multi-agency and external partnerships
• vulnerable groups oversight
• safeguarding-related policies and procedures
• KCSIE implementation
• a structured evaluation and improvement section including governor questions and challenges.

All sections are fully editable so you can adapt the template to your school's context and reporting cycle.

Ideal for designated safeguarding leads, headteachers and deputy headteachers preparing an annual safeguarding reports to governors. The template could be used termly as well.

👉 Ensuring that your governors know your school well - especially when it comes to safeguarding pupils - is a vital part of the leadership and governance of any setting. As such, this template can also be found as part of our Reports to Governors Template Bundle. A separate Headteacher's Report to Governors Template is also available to help you to work effectively with your governing board.

🔒 Fully in line with KCSIE 2025 and the 2025 Education Inspection Framework

This Single Central Record (SCR) Compliance Bundle gives DSLs, headteachers and school leaders a practical toolkit for checking safer recruitment and record-keeping processes against Part 3 of Keeping Children Safe in Education. Whether you're preparing for inspection or conducting routine compliance checks, these templates help you identify gaps quickly and document your findings clearly.

You'll get:

☑️ Single Central Record (SCR) Overview Checklist – conduct whole-record checks to verify you're recording information about the correct people (staff members, trainee teachers, agency and third-party workers, volunteers and contractors), confirm the right checks have been completed for each role (enhanced DBS checks, children's barred list checks, Section 128 checks, right to work in the UK checks and other statutory and recommended checks), and identify any missing dates or information

☑️ Single Central Record (SCR) Spot Check Template – triangulate your SCR evidence by comparing records against personnel files, identify discrepancies between your SCR and actual documentation, and document your findings clearly for governors and inspectors

All templates are fully editable Word documents so you can adapt them for your school's specific context and reuse them throughout the year to maintain compliance.

👉 Looking for further support on preparing for inspection? These resources are also available as part of the full Ofsted Inspection Preparation Pack too.