Staff Wellbeing and Workload Management

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. 

🔒 Fully aligned to the Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit 2026

This leadership and governance audit pack helps headteachers, senior leaders and governors evaluate strategic leadership and oversight across six key areas. Fully aligned with the September 2026 Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit, it supports self-evaluation, effective governance and whole-school improvement.

☑️ Editable leadership and governance audit document covering six sections including strategic leadership, governance, staff well-being and workload, professional learning and expertise, parental, professional and community engagement, and evaluating impact and continuous improvement

☑️ Action plan template, document checklist, question bank and one-page summary template to support effective auditing and evaluation

☑️ Comprehensive guidance document with detailed information on leadership and governance aligned to the 2026 Ofsted framework and how to audit your provision effectively

☑️ Unique alignment map showing how leadership oversight connects to deeper evaluation in other school audits, helping leaders and governors plan cohesive self-review

Ideal for headteachers, executive heads, principals, senior leadership teams, academy trustees, local governors and trust leaders reviewing school leadership and governance, evaluating impact and planning for improvement.

🔎 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.

AI use and ethics in schools – clear, reflective and leadership-focused.

Designed for heads, SLT, trust leaders and anyone interested in exploring effective use of AI in schools, this editable toolkit supports ethical use of AI in education by helping your school explore the risks, responsibilities and values that should guide staff use of AI tools. Use it to identify opportunities for AI to reduce workload, reflect on AI risks in schools and shape a clear, responsible and purposeful way forward for your setting.

☑️ Created for leaders reflecting on AI use and how it can benefit their school as well as potential risks
☑️ Supports school-wide discussion across seven areas of school life, including teaching and learning, assessment, administration, SEND and inclusion, parent communication, leaderships and ethical use of AI
☑️  Includes structured reflection entries with benefits, risks and discussion questions

Ideal for teams starting to explore AI, or for leaders who want to lead with clarity, not hype.

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

A key responsibility for headteachers and principals in schools is to support the wellbeing of your staff team... but what about you and your own wellbeing? You don't need us to tell you that the pressures of school leadership can often feel overwhelming but our FREE Headteacher Wellbeing Audit and Action Plan is here to help. Designed with the unique challenges of headship in mind, this tool helps you take stock of what or who is currently supporting you in a professional capacity and where there could be room for development to improve your wellbeing in school. It's perfect for heads, executive heads, school principals or anyone leading a school to use as a self-reflection tool, as well as being useful for trust leaders, CEOs, governors, trustees or anyone line managing a headteacher to utilise as part of a full support package.

Assess health and safety provision across your school with this comprehensive audit toolkit designed for school leaders and premises managers.

This pack gives you everything you need to evaluate H&S compliance, identify risks, and ensure your school is a safe environment for pupils, staff and visitors.

You'll get:

☑️ Full editable audit tool (28 pages) – comprehensive questions across 16 key areas of health and safety provision, from risk assessment and fire safety through to premises maintenance, security and crisis management

☑️ Health and safety action plan template – structured document to capture findings, prioritise actions and assign responsibilities with clear timescales for implementation

☑️ 7-page health and safety audit guidance document – clear instructions on planning your audit, who to involve, what evidence to gather, and how to use your findings to strengthen H&S provision and meet your legal duties

🔎 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.

🎒Updated for 2026, this CPD Planning and Preparation Pack supports headteachers, deputies and CPD leads to plan, deliver and evaluate a coherent staff development programme across the full school year.

Alongside the ready-to-use editable templates, the accompanying PDF guidance walks you through exploring staff training needs, building a CPD cycle, supporting ECTs through statutory induction and avoiding the common pitfalls that lead to disjointed or ineffective CPD. Whether you're starting from scratch or refining an existing offer, this pack gives you the structure and thinking space to plan effective CPD to meet the needs of your staff and pupils.

You'll get:

☑️ Needs exploration tools – pre-populated skills audits and surveys to identify priorities and career aspirations across your whole team
☑️ Planning and delivery documents – audits, action plans, coaching logs and strategic planning documents to structure your year
☑️ Evaluation and follow-up resources – CPD self-evaluation, participation evaluation and feedback surveys to measure real impact

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

Looking to support your school's staff members to develop the skills they need to thrive in their roles? This Skills Audit Pack allows staff to explore their role-specific strengths and weaknesses, which can then be used to plan effective professional development pathways and career progression routes, aid in performance management and appraisal cycles, and retain teachers and other staff members by valuing the contributions they bring to your school's team. Ideal for heads, MAT leaders and anyone with responsibility for CPD, this handy pack contains exactly what you need to uncover your school's strengths and plan for professional development & growth.

🔒 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.