Earlier this month, the National Governance Association and Parentkind published a new joint guide on parental engagement specifically for multi-academy trusts. It covers why parent participation matters, what schools and trusts can do about it, and how governing boards should monitor whether any of it is actually working.
On its own, that sounds like a sensible piece of guidance. But read it alongside the numbers, and it starts to look more like a wake-up call.
The gap between intention and action
Research from the NGA found that over 75% of governors believe community engagement should be a priority. That sounds encouraging. But when asked whether it actually is a priority in their trust, only 47% of governors and 53% of trustees said yes. Fewer than one in five put it in their top three.
That is a significant gap. And it matters, because the expectations on trusts are only going in one direction.
The government's "Every Child Achieving and Thriving" white paper, published in February, makes clear that trusts will be expected to hold annual parental forums, ensure boards hear directly from parents and school communities, and report publicly on how they support stronger outcomes in their community role. MAT inspections will hold trusts to account on this.
Three quarters of governors say parent engagement should be a priority. Fewer than half say it actually is.
Why the new NGA guide matters right now
The timing of this guide is not accidental. It lands in a window where trusts are being told, from multiple directions, that parent engagement is no longer optional. Ofsted's new inspection framework explicitly includes governance in its evaluation criteria. The white paper sets formal expectations around parental forums. And the NGA's own research shows that most trusts have not caught up yet.
The guide itself covers practical ground. It addresses how trusts should make their governance structures visible to parents, because the different tiers of governance in a MAT can be genuinely confusing. It talks about how trustees should assess whether engagement strategies are working across the trust, not just in individual schools. And it highlights the importance of spotting trends and patterns in parental feedback at a trust-wide level.
That last point is worth sitting with. If you are running a trust with fifteen or twenty schools, and each one is handling parent engagement in its own way, you have no way of knowing whether what you are doing is working. You have anecdotes. You do not have evidence.
What this looks like in practice
I talk to schools and trusts regularly about how they run elections and gather feedback. The pattern I see most often is this: parent governor elections happen when a vacancy arises, using whatever process the clerk has inherited. Sometimes it is a paper ballot in book bags. Sometimes it is an email to parents asking for nominations. Turnout is low. Engagement feels like a box-ticking exercise rather than a genuine attempt to involve parents in the life of the school.
The NGA guide is essentially saying: that is not good enough any more.
If trusts are going to meet the expectations set out in the white paper and the new inspection framework, they need structured, consistent, documented approaches to parent engagement. Not just for governor elections, but for consultations, surveys, feedback, and all the other ways parents should have a voice in how their children's school is run.
Almost one in five parents find the idea of getting involved in their child's school intimidating. That is not a problem you fix with a letter in a book bag.
The accessibility question
One statistic from the guidance stood out to me. Almost one in five parents, 19%, find the idea of getting involved in their child's school intimidating. Think about what that means for a parent governor election. If a fifth of your parent body feels that way before you even start, your election process needs to be as accessible and straightforward as possible.
Paper ballots collected via book bags do not help here. They require parents to be physically present at the school gate, to fill in a form, to return it on time. For working parents, for parents with English as an additional language, for parents who feel anxious about engaging with the school, those barriers add up quickly.
Online voting removes most of those barriers. A parent can vote from their phone at 10pm if that is when they have five minutes. They do not need to be at the school gate. They do not need to navigate a paper form. The School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2012 specifically permit electronic ballots for parent governor elections, so the legal framework is already there.
Consistency across a trust
For MATs, there is an additional challenge that the NGA guide rightly highlights: consistency. If one school in your trust runs parent governor elections online with proper audit trails, and another does it with a show of hands at a parents' evening, you have a governance problem. Not just a process problem, a governance problem.
Trustees need to be able to demonstrate that parent engagement processes are fair, consistent, and documented across every school in the trust. That is what inspectors will be looking for. That is what the white paper envisages. And that is what good governance looks like.
The practical answer is to standardise. Pick one approach, implement it across the trust, and make sure you can evidence that it is working. For elections, that means a single platform with proper audit trails, accessible to all parents, producing results you can verify and report on. For consultations and surveys, it means structured feedback mechanisms that feed into trust-wide reporting.
What to do about it
If you are a clerk, a governance professional, or a trust governance lead reading this, the new NGA guide is worth downloading. It gives you a framework for thinking about parent engagement that goes beyond "we send a newsletter." But the guide on its own will not close the gap between what your trust says about engagement and what it actually does.
That takes practical steps. Review how your schools currently run parent governor elections. Ask whether the process is consistent across the trust. Look at your turnout figures and ask whether they are acceptable. Consider whether parents who find engagement intimidating have a realistic way to participate.
And if the answer to any of those questions makes you uncomfortable, that is probably a sign that something needs to change.
If you would like to see how online voting can make parent engagement more accessible and consistent across your trust, take a look at choicevoting.co.uk. We have been helping schools run parent governor elections for over twenty years, and we are always happy to talk through what a trust-wide approach looks like.