Mental Health and Pastoral Leadership

Are you stepping into the role of Pastoral Lead but not sure where to begin or how to prioritise everything on your plate? Firstly, congratulations! And secondly, you're in the right place – this free Honeyguide checklist is designed to support your thinking right from day one.

As a Pastoral Lead, you hold a uniquely far-reaching role – one that touches safeguarding, well-being, behaviour, SEND, attendance and personal development all at once. That breadth can feel overwhelming at first. This checklist breaks it down into manageable tasks across your first few weeks, your first half-term and your first full term, so you can feel organised and confident as you settle into the role.

Whether you're a newly appointed Pastoral Lead, stepping up from a teaching, head of year or form tutor role, or an experience Pupil Welfare Leader taking over from a previous postholder, this checklist will help you hit the ground running.

Ideal for new Pastoral Leads, Heads of Year, Personal Development Leads and anyone with combined pastoral and well-being responsibilities.

🔒 Fully aligned to the Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit 2026

This editable audit pack helps heads, deputies and school leaders take a clear-sighted look at how their school promotes personal development and supports pupil wellbeing. Built around the structure and themes in Ofsted’s 2026 School Inspection Toolkit, it offers a detailed framework to evaluate current strengths, identify gaps and shape next steps in students' personal development and well-being.

You'll get:

☑️ Comprehensive and editable 52-page personal development and wellbeing audit document with guiding questions and evidence prompts across six key framework areas: strategic leadership of personal development, the personal development programme, careers education, pastoral support and well-being, inclusive personal development, and evaluating impact.

☑️ Document checklist and voice-gathering question bank to support evidence triangulation when auditing, plus action plan template, one-page summary and grade descriptor grids to support next steps

☑️ 18-page audit guidance providing detailed commentary on each evaluation area

Ideal for leaders who want to reflect now, plan ahead and keep school improvement moving, regardless of when inspection is due.

🔎 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.

🎒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 to the final Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit 2025

Help your school prepare for Ofsted's new School Inspection Toolkit 2025 with this comprehensive Personal Development and Well-being update pack - everything you need to understand the changes, brief your team, and ensure your school is inspection-ready.

What you'll get:

☑️ Staff & Governor Briefing PowerPoint (24 slides) – Ready-to-use presentation covering all Personal Development and Well-being requirements, from strategic leadership to inclusive provision

☑️ Toolkit vs. Handbook Comparison Document – Clear side-by-side analysis of what's changed from the Personal Development requirements in the old Ofsted framework to the new Personal Development and Well-being requirements

☑️ Understanding Ofsted's Toolkit Guide – Easy-to-digest breakdown of the new evaluation criteria, with practical considerations for school leaders

☑️ Leader Action Checklist – Strategic planning tool to help you implement the changes across your school community

☑️ Editable Grade Descriptor Grid – Customisable toolkit reference for your leadership team

Perfect for: Headteachers, SLT members, and pastoral leads preparing for Ofsted inspection under the new 2025 School Inspection Toolkit, or wanting to ensure their Personal Development and Well-being provision meets the latest requirements.

Save hours of research time – we've analysed the new toolkit so you can focus on implementing the changes that matter most for your pupils' outcomes.

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

Looking to explore PSHE, RSE and/or RSHE in-depth and build confidence about an upcoming PSHE Deep Dive in 2025? Tailored for PSHE, relationships and health education, or pastoral and welfare subject leaders, including those with responsibility for personal development, this bundle helps you to consider intent, implementation and impact questions across the breadth of PSHE and RSE plus health education, allowing you to consider areas of strength and weakness so you can plan for improvement and (if you feel you need to) prepare for Ofsted.

🎒Updated for the 2025-2026 academic year

Review your school's equality and diversity provision with this comprehensive audit toolkit designed for school leaders.

This pack gives you everything you need to conduct a systematic evaluation of how well your school promotes equality, challenges discrimination and supports diverse communities.

You'll get:

☑️ Full editable audit tool (24 pages) – comprehensive questions across six key areas: policies and procedures, pupil experience and voice, curriculum teaching and learning, staff development and recruitment, community engagement and partnerships, learning environment, and leadership and strategic planning

☑️ Supporting templates – editable action plan, document checklist, question bank and one-page summary template for reporting to governors or trustees

☑️ 18-page equality and diversity audit guidance document – practical instructions on planning your audit, who to involve, what evidence to collect, and how to use your findings to strengthen provision and meet your duties under the Equality Act 2010

🔎 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 plus three essential good practice audits.

🔒 Fully aligned to the April 2026 DfE guidance on restrictive interventions

Get your school compliant with the April 2026 DfE guidance on restrictive interventions with this practical seven-resource pack for headteachers, SENDCos, behaviour leads and pastoral teams. The guidance replaces the 2013 Use of Reasonable Force advice and introduces new statutory recording and reporting duties – this pack helps you understand what has changed, audit your current practice and policy, and get the right systems in place.

You'll get a:

☑️ Leader Action Checklist that works through every area of the guidance – from statutory recording and reporting duties to policy, SEND support, staff training and governing body oversight – so you can identify your most urgent actions and plan your response 

☑️ Policy Checklist to audit your existing policy against the new statutory requirements and identify any gaps before governors are asked to ratify it 

☑️ Behaviour Risk Assessment Form and Pupil Behaviour Support Plan Template to support individual pupils where there is an identified risk of needing to use reasonable force, with a focus on de-escalation and preventative strategies

☑️ Use of Restrictive Intervention and Reasonable Force Log with every statutory recording field built in, so leaders can record incidents compliantly and meet the same-day notification duty with confidence

☑️ Staff Training Presentation – a ready-made PowerPoint covering the guidance changes, staff legal powers, the three-part assessment and recording responsibilities – all ready to use in a staff meeting with no preparation needed. Please note: this is not safe handling or physical restraint training that instructs staff how to safely restrain a pupil.

☑️ 12 Restrictive Intervention Scenarios to build staff confidence in applying the guidance – ideal for drip-feeding into briefings and staff meetings across the year

🎒 Updated for 2026

Strong parent engagement doesn't happen by accident. This practical pack gives school leaders and pastoral leads the tools to audit, plan and improve how your school builds relationships with families, from welcoming new parents in September to supporting harder-to-reach families year-round.

You'll get:

☑️ A comprehensive audit tool covering leadership and culture, communication, parent voice, learning at home, attendance and behaviour, SEND and inclusion, staff development and impact and evaluation as well as a structured action plan for recording priorities and next steps from the audit

☑️ A whole-school parent engagement checklist covering the full academic year from pre-September planning through to end-of-year evaluation

☑️ A new parent induction checklist to support consistent, structured family onboarding from the day a place is confirmed

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

Ideal for headteachers, deputy headteachers, assistant headteachers with responsibility for family liaison or pastoral care, DSLs, SENDCos and link governors for parent engagement.

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.