The Department for Education updated the maintained schools governance guide on 15 July. The changes reflect new duties that come into force on 1 September, so if you clerk a governing body or sit on one, the summer holiday is the window to get ready. Not the first week of September, when everyone is already stretched.
I spend a lot of my time talking to schools about how they run elections and gather views from their communities, so I read these updates closely. Here is what the refresh means in practice, and what I would do with the weeks before term starts.
What actually changed
The governance guide is non-statutory. It does not create law on its own. What it does is pull together, in one place, the legal responsibilities a governing body already carries, and it points you to the regulations behind each one. That makes it the single most useful reference document most boards have.
The July refresh updates the guide to reflect new duties that apply from 1 September, alongside other recommendations. It arrives at the same time as the 2026 edition of Keeping Children Safe in Education, which was published on 7 July and replaces the current version on 1 September. Every governor and trustee is required to read and understand Part 2 of that guidance, and this year it embeds new expectations around artificial intelligence and safeguarding throughout. So there are two documents landing on the same date, and both expect the board to have done its reading.
The duty that keeps coming up
Read through the governance guide and one theme runs the whole way through it: the board is expected to listen to its community and to be able to show that it does.
The core duties on a governing body include implementing processes to listen and respond to parents and carers, pupils, staff and local communities. Separately, there is a statutory duty under the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to have regard to any views parents express. The guide is clear that an effective board makes sure its school regularly seeks and considers the views of parents, carers, pupils and staff, that those views inform its decisions, and that decisions are communicated back clearly.
Listening is not the soft part of governance. It is a duty, and increasingly it is one you are expected to evidence.
That last point is where a lot of boards get caught out. Doing the listening is one thing. Being able to show, months later, that you asked the question, who you asked, how many replied and what you did with the answers is another. A conversation in a corridor does not leave a record. A structured ballot or consultation does.
Why the autumn term is the moment for this
The start of the school year is when governance work concentrates. Boards re-form after the summer. Parent governor terms end and vacancies need filling. Many boards elect or re-elect a chair and vice-chair at the first meeting. Committees are set. It is the busiest governance period of the year, and it is also when a new set of duties takes effect.
If you leave the parent governor election until September, you are running a nomination and voting process in the same fortnight that staff are settling several hundred children back into school. Turnout suffers, deadlines slip, and the election becomes a job you rush rather than one you run well. A parent governor election is a summer task that finishes in September, not one that starts there.
What I would do before term starts
A few practical things, none of which need a big budget or a working party.
First, make sure every governor has read Part 2 of Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 and knows the guide has been updated. Put it on the agenda for the first meeting so it is minuted. That minute is itself a piece of evidence.
Second, look at your parent governor vacancies now. Work out how many seats are open, when the current terms end, and set the election timeline so nominations open early in September and voting closes before half term. Decide how parents will actually cast a vote. If it still means a paper slip going home in a book bag, expect the same low turnout you had last year.
Third, decide how you will gather and record the views of parents, pupils and staff across the year, not just at election time. A wellbeing survey, a consultation on a policy change, a quick vote on a proposal: these are the moments that show a board is listening. Choose a method that leaves a clean record you can point to later, because the duty is not only to listen but to have regard to what you hear.
The through line
None of this is about buying software. It is about treating the listening duties in the guide as real duties, planning for them before the term buries you, and keeping a record you would be comfortable showing an inspector or a parent who asks.
Running your parent governor election online is one way to make the process quicker and to leave that audit trail without any extra admin, and it is a natural first step if you are moving away from paper. If that is something you are weighing up for the autumn, you are welcome to have a look at how it works at choicevoting.co.uk. Either way, the useful move this week is the simple one: read the update, look at your vacancies, and decide how your board will show it listens this year.