The summer holidays are almost here, and most schools are winding down. If you have parent governor vacancies coming up in the autumn, though, this is exactly the wrong moment to switch off. The work to fill those seats properly does not start in September. It starts now, before everyone disappears for six weeks.
I say this every year, and every year a handful of clerks and business managers get caught out. A parent governor term quietly ends over the summer, September arrives, the board realises it is a member short, and suddenly an election that should have taken a month is being rushed through in a fortnight. That is how you end up with a single nomination, no real contest, and a seat filled by whoever happened to be paying attention rather than whoever the parent body actually wanted.
Why the timing catches people out
Parent governor terms run for four years. That is a long enough cycle that it is easy to lose track of exactly when each one expires, and the ones that lapse over the summer are the easiest to miss because nobody is in the building to notice. By the time the new term starts and the board sits down for its first meeting, the vacancy has already been open for weeks.
A proper election needs runway. You have to give notice, open a nominations window, wait for candidates to come forward, prepare the ballot, give parents time to vote, and then count. Do that well and it takes the best part of a month. Try to compress it into the first two weeks of September, when parents are still finding their feet and staff are drowning in start-of-year admin, and turnout suffers. The whole point of an election is to find out what the parent body wants. Rush it and you lose that.
An election squeezed into the first fortnight of September is not really an election. It is a formality with a ballot attached.
What the rules actually require
The framework has not changed, but it is worth a reminder because the Department for Education tidied up its guidance recently. Late in 2025 the DfE replaced the old Governance Handbook, which had not been properly revised since 2020, with two separate governance guides: one for maintained schools and one for academy trusts. There are no new legal requirements buried in them, but they pull the government's expectations into one place, and the run-up to a new academic year is a sensible moment to check you are still doing things by the book.
The rules themselves sit in the School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2012. A maintained school governing body must have at least two parent governors, and those seats are filled by election. Every parent of a registered pupil is eligible to stand and to vote. If more candidates come forward than there are places, you hold a secret ballot.
One requirement trips schools up more than any other. You can run the election electronically, and I would encourage you to, but a postal ballot must still be available to any parent who wants one. Going digital does not mean going digital only. It means giving every parent a way to vote that works for them, and making sure nobody is shut out because they are not online. The academy trust position is slightly different, with the detail set out in each trust's articles of association, but the principle of an accessible, fair vote is the same.
A timeline you can set before you break up
Here is the practical bit. Before you finish for the summer, you do not need to run the election. You just need to have it planned so that it runs itself when term starts. That means deciding your dates now and drafting the parent notice now, so the first week of September is a case of pressing go rather than starting from scratch.
Work backwards from when you want the new governor seated. Allow at least two weeks for nominations, so parents have a real chance to consider standing rather than being asked on a Friday for a decision by Monday. Allow a clear week to ten days for voting, which covers parents who are away, working shifts, or simply need reminding. Build in a day or two at the end for the count and for notifying the result. Send the notice of election to every parent, not just the ones you know are engaged, and make it obvious what the role involves and why it matters. A governor vacancy filled by an informed parent who chose to stand is worth ten filled by quiet default.
Decide your dates and draft your parent notice before you break up. Then September is a case of pressing go, not starting from scratch.
The turnout problem, and what actually helps
Every school knows the real challenge. Half your parents do not check the school bag, the other half mean to reply and forget, and a paper slip that has to come back signed is a barrier before anyone has even read it. Low turnout in a governor election is not apathy. It is friction.
The things that move the needle are simple. Make voting possible from a phone, because that is where parents actually are. Keep the postal option open for anyone who prefers it or cannot get online, because accessibility is not optional and it is the law. Send a reminder partway through, since most non-voters are not refusing, they have just not got round to it. And keep a clean record of who was invited, how many voted, and what the result was, so that if anyone ever asks whether the election was run fairly you can show them rather than tell them.
That last point matters more than it used to. Governing boards are increasingly expected to evidence that their processes are sound, not simply assert it. An election with a clear audit trail, showing that every parent was invited, that the vote was secret, and that the count was accurate, is one less thing to worry about when the questions come. It is also, quite simply, the right way to run a democratic process in a school.
Sort it now, thank yourself in September
None of this is difficult. It just needs doing before the building empties. Check which parent governor terms end over the summer or early in the autumn. Set your election dates. Draft the notice. Decide how parents will vote, and make sure that includes both an easy online route and a postal option for anyone who needs it. Do that before you break up, and September becomes the easy month it should be rather than a scramble.
If you would like a straightforward way to run the vote itself, with electronic and postal ballots side by side and a full audit trail as standard, that is exactly what we built Choice Voting to do. Have a look at choicevoting.co.uk, or drop me a line and I will talk you through how other schools handle their autumn elections. Either way, the best thing you can do for your September self is spend twenty minutes on this before you switch off for the summer.