Leadership and Governance Audit Pack (2025)

Evaluating school leadership and governance requires structured reflection and evidence-based review. This pack provides editable tools to help headteachers, senior leadership teams and governors assess strategic leadership, governance practice and oversight with confidence.

Inside, you'll find:

☑️ 44-page Leadership and Governance Audit document
Your core self-evaluation tool, with reflective prompts and structured questions across six key areas of leadership and governance. Includes space to capture strengths, identify development needs and draw together supporting evidence. The six sections are:

• Strategic Leadership
• Governance
• Staff Well-being and Workload
• Professional Learning and Expertise
• Parental, Professional and Community Engagement
• Evaluating Impact and Continuous Improvement

The audit also contains an alignment map that shows how leadership oversight links to deeper evaluation in other audits, such as curriculum, safeguarding and behaviour. It helps leaders and governors plan a cohesive self-evaluation strategy.

☑️ 18-page Leadership and Governance guidance document
Comprehensive PDF guidance with detailed information on leadership and governance fully aligned to the 2025 Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit, helping you understand expectations and approach your audit with confidence.

☑️ Leadership and Governance Action Plan template
Helps you prioritise actions, agree practical next steps and track progress over time.

☑️ Document checklist
Provides ideas for the leadership, governance and compliance documents that will strengthen your audit by having a robust base of evidence.

☑️ Comprehensive question bank
Editable questions to support evidence gathering from staff, pupils, parents, governors and trust leaders.

☑️ One-page summary template
Summarises your findings for easy sharing with SLT, governors or trustees.

☑️ Leadership and Governance grade descriptor grid
Clear overview of what effective leadership and governance looks like at different levels, supporting more confident judgements during your audit process.

All resources come in fully editable Word format apart from the PDF guidance, so you can adapt them for your school's specific context.

Strengthening leadership and governance is rarely the work of one person alone. This audit pack is for those with responsibility for strategic leadership, oversight and governance across the school.

It will be most useful for headteachers, executive heads, principals, deputy heads, senior leadership teams and those serving as governors, trustees or local board members. Trust leaders overseeing multiple schools will also find it valuable for building a shared approach to reviewing leadership and governance practice at scale.

Rather than a simple checklist, it is designed for collaborative use, helping leaders and governors bring together insights from different roles, evaluate strategic capacity and identify where leadership and governance can be strengthened further.

If you are planning self-evaluation, preparing for Ofsted, reviewing staff well-being and workload, or ensuring responsible governance in maintained schools, academies or multi-academy trusts, this audit provides structured questions and evidence prompts to guide honest, practical review.

This comprehensive audit pack helps busy school leaders tackle the key leadership and governance challenges when evaluating and improving their school's strategic direction and oversight. Whether you're conducting a leadership review in preparation for Ofsted inspection, evaluating governance effectiveness, planning improvement priorities or strengthening your self-evaluation, this pack provides the support you need. It'll help you answer:

"How can I audit our leadership and governance provision effectively across all key areas?"
The comprehensive audit framework guides you through systematic evaluation across six essential themes, with structured questions and evidence prompts fully aligned to the 2025 Ofsted School Inspection Toolkit to ensure thorough coverage.

"What should I be looking for when reviewing strategic leadership and capacity to improve?"
Detailed audit questions help you evaluate whether your leadership team has the vision, expertise and capacity to drive sustainable improvement, with clear evaluation criteria that reflect statutory requirements and best practice in school leadership.

"How do I know if our governance is effectively holding leaders to account?"
Specific audit sections focus on governance structures, governor expertise, strategic oversight and challenge - helping you identify what's working well and where governance practice needs strengthening.

"What evidence demonstrates effective strategic oversight of our school's core functions?"
The audit framework helps you gather and evaluate evidence of how well leadership and governance oversee key areas such as curriculum, safeguarding, behaviour and financial management, ensuring nothing falls through the gaps.

"How can I review whether we're genuinely prioritising staff well-being and managing workload effectively?"
Dedicated audit questions address workload management, well-being support, work-life balance and whether leadership decisions consistently consider impact on staff - with prompts to gather staff voice as evidence.

"How do I evaluate whether our professional learning strategy is building the expertise our school needs?"
Comprehensive sections examine how leaders identify development needs, quality-assure professional learning, support early career teachers and build expertise across all roles to strengthen provision over time.

"How can I assess the quality of our engagement with parents, professionals and the wider community?"
Voice-gathering tools and question banks help you systematically evaluate how effectively you communicate with and involve parents, work with external professionals and build community partnerships that support pupils.

"What's the best way to evaluate our approach to monitoring, evaluating impact and driving continuous improvement?"
The audit helps you review whether your self-evaluation is accurate, whether monitoring activities are purposeful and manageable, and whether improvement planning is strategic and evidence-based.

"How do I involve different stakeholders in evaluating our leadership and governance?"
The question bank and guidance support you to gather views from staff, pupils, parents, governors and trust leaders, ensuring your audit reflects multiple perspectives and strengthens strategic decision-making.

"What's the best way to identify priorities for improving leadership and governance?"
The action planning template helps you synthesise audit findings into clear, manageable next steps with realistic timescales and accountability measures linked to your school improvement plan.

"How do I present audit findings to senior leaders, governors or trust executives?"
The one-page summary template and grade descriptor grid help you communicate key strengths, areas for development and recommended actions clearly and concisely, supporting strategic discussions about leadership and governance priorities.

This pack gives you everything needed to conduct thorough, evidence-based evaluation of leadership and governance so you can identify what's working well, address any gaps with confidence, and demonstrate how your school's leadership secures sustainable improvement for all pupils.

If you’re reviewing strategic leadership, governance and oversight, these resources can help you plan effectively, build capacity and ensure a consistent approach across the school.

Ofsted Phone Call Preparation Pack

Practical prompts and editable templates to help headteachers and senior leaders prepare for Ofsted leadership and governance conversations with clarity and confidence.

School Budget Management Pack

A comprehensive set of tools to support strategic financial oversight, align budget decisions with school priorities and strengthen governance of resources.

Link Governor Audit Support Pack

Editable templates and guidance to help link governors carry out focused audits, report findings effectively and support strong governance practice.

Have a look at what's in the pack here: Leadership and Governance Audit Pack