I have been working with schools on their governance and election processes for over two decades. In that time, I have seen plenty of policy shifts, guidance updates and regulatory changes land on the desks of clerks and chairs of governors. But I am struggling to think of a single September that carries as much governance-related change as this one.
If your governing board has not already started planning for the autumn term, you are behind. Not catastrophically behind, not irreversibly behind, but behind enough that your first meeting in September could be a scramble rather than a strategy session. And given what is coming, that is not a position you want to be in.
What is landing in September 2026
Let me walk through the main changes, because individually they might seem manageable. Together, they represent a genuine step change in what governing boards are expected to know, do and evidence.
The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act is now law. It received Royal Assent in May, and several provisions take effect from the start of the new academic year. Among them: a duty for Ofsted to inspect multi-academy trusts, new powers for the Secretary of State to issue directions to trusts that are not meeting their duties, and a requirement for new academy teachers to hold or be working towards qualified teacher status. For governing boards, the trust inspection provisions are the most immediately significant. Boards need to be confident that their governance arrangements, safeguarding oversight and strategic leadership can withstand trust-level scrutiny, not just school-level inspection.
KCSIE 2026 comes into force on 1 September. The consultation closed in April, and the final guidance will be published over the summer. Early indications suggest significant changes across safeguarding practice, online safety, RSHE alignment and the management of generative AI in schools. Governors and trustees have a statutory responsibility to ensure their school complies with KCSIE. That means reading the updated guidance, understanding what has changed, and being confident that the designated safeguarding lead has a plan to implement it before pupils arrive in September.
The Schools White Paper sets new expectations for parent and community engagement. The government has committed to consulting on requiring all trusts to hold annual parental forums and to maintain local governance structures for every school. It is also designing minimum expectations for parental engagement. While these are not yet statutory, the direction is clear, and trusts that wait for legislation before acting will find themselves playing catch-up.
Why this matters for how you run elections
Here is the part that often gets overlooked in discussions about governance reform: none of these changes work properly without robust processes for selecting, electing and engaging the people who sit around the board table.
A governance structure is only as strong as the process that fills it. If your parent governor election last had three candidates and twelve votes, you have a representation problem, not just a turnout problem.
The white paper is explicit about trusts needing governance structures that "include all their schools" and "ensure boards hear directly from parents and school communities." The NGA's most recent annual governance survey found that 66% of boards struggle to recruit governors and trustees, and 70% of boards are operating with at least one vacancy. If you are a trust with 20 schools and half of them have unfilled parent governor seats, the white paper's requirements are going to feel very uncomfortable very quickly.
This is where the practical question matters. How are you running your parent elections? Are you still sending letters home in book bags and hoping they come back? Are you giving parents a two-day window to respond by email? Or are you making it genuinely easy for every parent to participate, with accessible online voting that works on a phone at 9pm after the children are in bed?
The difference between 8% turnout and 40% turnout is rarely about whether parents care. It is almost always about whether the process meets them where they are.
What your board should be doing right now
Your summer term board meeting is the planning meeting for next year. Here is what I would want to see on the agenda if I were chairing a governing board right now.
Review your board composition. Who is up for reappointment? Which seats are vacant? Do you have the skills you need for next year, particularly around safeguarding, finance and data? If you need to run a parent governor election in the autumn, start planning the timeline now. Do not wait until October and then rush it in three weeks.
Agree your KCSIE response plan. You do not need to have read the final guidance yet. But you do need to have a plan for how and when the board will be briefed once it is published. Build it into your September agenda. Identify who on the board leads on safeguarding and make sure they have the time and support to digest the changes over the summer.
Audit your parent engagement. When did you last hear directly from parents as a board? Not through the headteacher, not through complaints, but through a structured mechanism like a survey, a consultation or a forum? The white paper is heading towards mandatory parental forums for trusts. Even if you are a maintained school, inspectors will increasingly expect to see evidence of meaningful stakeholder engagement. Start building the habit now.
If you are a trust, check your local governance arrangements. Do all your schools have functioning local governance? Are parent representatives in place? Is there a clear line from local committees up to the trust board? The Children's Wellbeing Act means trust-level inspection is coming. Inspectors will want to see that governance is not just happening at the top, but is embedded across every school in the trust.
Documentation is the difference
One theme runs through every single change landing in September: evidence. Ofsted wants to see evidence of effective governance. The white paper expects evidence of parental engagement. KCSIE requires evidence of safeguarding compliance. Trust inspections will look for evidence of strategic oversight across multiple schools.
If you cannot show how a decision was made, who was consulted, or how a governor was elected, then in the eyes of an inspector, it did not happen properly.
This is not about bureaucracy. It is about being able to demonstrate that your governance processes are transparent, inclusive and auditable. An online election with a clear audit trail is better evidence than a show of hands at a parents' evening. A documented consultation with timestamped responses is better evidence than "we asked at the school gate."
The schools that find inspection straightforward are not the ones with the most paperwork. They are the ones whose processes generate evidence naturally, as a byproduct of doing things properly.
Three months is enough, but only if you start now
I am not writing this to alarm anyone. Three months is plenty of time to review your governance arrangements, plan your autumn elections, and prepare for the changes coming in September. But three months is not plenty of time if the first step happens in September itself.
Use your summer term meeting. Put governance readiness on the agenda. Ask the questions that matter: are we compliant, are we representative, and can we evidence both?
If you would like to talk about how to run a proper parent governor election, a staff vote or a trust-wide consultation, have a look at what we do at choicevoting.co.uk. We have been helping schools get this right for over twenty years, and this September, getting it right matters more than ever.