If you're on a trust board or local governing body (LGB) in a multi-academy trust (MAT), check your scheme of delegation to see what your board has responsibility for.
Check in on wellbeing and mental health
As you're approaching the end of the school year and exam season, you'll want to make sure that your school/trust is supporting the wellbeing of headteachers, senior leaders, staff and pupils.
As a board, ask yourselves the following questions, and then chat to your headteacher/CEO and senior leaders where you have any uncertainty:
- What's being done to support headteacher and CEO wellbeing? How do we know if they're coping with their workload and achieving a healthy work-life balance?
- What is our school/trust doing to improve wellbeing for each of the following groups: headteacher, senior leaders, staff and pupils? Does it have action plans for this?
- If so, what's the intended impact of these initiatives? How does the school/trust know whether they're working?
- Do senior leaders survey staff to understand their needs – for example, using a wellbeing questionnaire?
- Does our school and/or trust vision include a commitment to improving mental health and wellbeing? If not, should we review the vision together with senior leaders?
The Department for Education (DfE) has a set of resources to help improve workload and wellbeing for school staff. Ask your leaders whether they've used these to consider how to look after staff wellbeing going forward.
Get support with thinking strategically about wellbeing with our other articles:
- How to approach wellbeing strategically
- Wellbeing initiatives: what they look like in practice and how the board is involved
- Questions to ask about wellbeing
- Wellbeing link governor: role description
Be clear on the arrangements for summer 2025 exams
If you haven't already gone over this in the spring term, make sure your board is clear on what's happening with assessments this year and that your school/trust is ready for them.
Key Stage (KS) 2 SATs
SATs are scheduled from Monday 12 to Thursday 15 May. Use our article to help you understand your role in Key Stage 2 SATs.
Ask senior leaders:
- How are you ensuring compliance with the assessment and reporting arrangements for this year?
- How are teachers using practice materials to prepare pupils?
- How many pupils will be taking the tests this year?
- How many pupils will not be taking the tests this year and how were they identified?
- How many pupils will need modified tests and how were they identified?
GCSEs, AS and A-levels
Students will be provided with support materials in the form of formulae and equation sheets for GCSE mathematics, physics and combined science exams in 2025, 2026 and 2027 (as explained in this Ofqual guidance). It was previously thought that this would end in 2025.
Ask senior leaders:
- How are you supporting the mental health and wellbeing of pupils in the lead-up to the exam period?
- How are you promoting a positive exam culture within the school/trust, encouraging pupils to adopt effective study habits and revision techniques?
- How are you communicating with parents/carers about their role in supporting pupils during the exam period, and keeping them informed about their child's progress and performance?
Review and approve your budget forecast
Your board must submit your budget forecast to the DfE.
You're no longer required to submit a separate budget forecast return outturn, and this is now permanently included in the budget forecast return (BFR):
- The BFR form will be available from 3 June, with a submission deadline of 28 August
- The workbooks that help you complete the return will be available on the DfE's guidance webpage (see the link above)
Get prepared for your role in challenging and approving the budget with our article on the budget approval process.
Review and publish details of your PE and sport premium funding (primary schools)
You need to publish how you've spent the PE and sport premium funding by 31 July at the latest.
You're required to publish on each school's website:
- The amount of primary PE and sport premium received
- A full breakdown of how it has been spent (including justifying any additional costs incurred)
- Details of the impact of the funding on pupils’ PE attainment, physical activity and sport participation
- Details of how the spend will be sustainable in the future
- The percentage of pupils within your year 6 cohort in the 2024/25 academic year who met the National Curriculum swimming and water safety requirements
Consider staffing arrangements for 2025/26
Reorganise your staffing structure if necessary
This might be the case where:
- Your budget-setting process has shown that you need to make savings
- Staff have resigned and you need to think about what this means for the staffing structure as a whole
- You're thinking about changing how your school/trust delivers education and want to try something new in September
Learn about your role in this process.
Recruit a headteacher if yours has resigned
If your headteacher (or one of your headteachers in a MAT) has resigned, you'll want to kick-start the recruitment process.
The board of trustees has responsibility for headteacher recruitment. If you're on an LGB in a MAT, check your scheme of delegation to see if your board has any delegated recruitment responsibilities.
Use our interview questions and tasks and advice on the process to make sure you can run an efficient and effective recruitment round.
If you're actively recruiting, find out what to do if it's not going well.
Be aware of your trust's cyber security
The whole board is responsible for monitoring what precautions your school/trust has in place and whether it's safe from a potential cyber attack
It's a good idea to combine cyber security with things like UK GDPR compliance and your school/trust's physical security as a regular agenda item.
You'll want to ask questions like:
- How do you monitor whether the systems our school/trust has in place are effective?
- How often do staff receive training in cyber security?
Get up to speed with what you need to know when monitoring cyber security in your school/trust, and how to mitigate your own personal cyber security risks with our cyber security training course.
Section 7.9.3 of the academy trust governance guide states that at least 1 trustee should complete cyber security training, so bring this up with your board to make sure you're meeting this expectation.
Reflect on your board's effectiveness
Consider how your board has performed over the year. Discuss:
- How well you've worked together. For example, think about the big issues your school/trust has faced this year and how you've responded to them
- Whether you have all the skills you need on your board, and what extra skills you would like
- Whether you need to make any changes in order to work more effectively over the next year
Carry out a self-evaluation and use our board effectiveness tool to help with this, then discuss the results in a meeting. Discuss your training needs, and what you can do about them as a board.
Gather stakeholder views
The summer term is a good time to ask your school/trust leaders to conduct surveys with key stakeholders to get an overall picture of what they think of the school/trust.
By doing this you'll have an idea of any concerns that pupils, staff and parents/carers have going into the new academic year, and can keep an eye on these areas to try and avoid problems escalating into complaints or grievances.
Find out more about how to gather effective feedback from staff and parents/carers, and how to use pupil questionnaires.
Plan and agree your programme of work for internal scrutiny (trustees)
All academy trusts must have a programme of internal scrutiny to assure boards that the trust's financial and non-financial controls and risk management procedures are operating effectively.
Your trust’s audit and risk committee (or similar, if this function is included within another committee) will oversee and approve the annual programme of work for internal scrutiny.
The board of trustees will need to make sure the committee has done this, and review its plans if necessary.
If you’re on an LGB, check your scheme of delegation to see if you have a role in planning/agreeing this programme of work.
Read more about what the requirements are for the audit and risk committee, and internal scrutiny.
Monitor your school improvement plan (SIP) and review your goals
It’s good practice to review each of the headline objectives in your SIP (or trust improvement plan) at least termly. In the summer term, you can also review how you've met your goals over the course of the whole academic year.
You could do this at your full board meeting, or delegate this to a committee and have them report back to the board.
Questions to ask
- Are we making progress towards our objectives?
- If not, why not? What can we do to correct this for:
- The rest of the summer term?
- Next academic year?
And as a board, ask yourselves:
- Are our monitoring methods working well?
- Do we have enough information to determine whether we're making progress?
Set the strategy for 2025/26
Your board will also meet with senior leaders before the end of the academic year to set high-level objectives for next year. You'll determine the key areas of improvement and objectives in your SIP.
This might be done at school level and trust level, if you have an overarching trust improvement plan (TIP).
Find out more about reviewing your SIP and setting objectives.
Headteacher's or CEO's report
If you want a report from your headteacher/CEO, tell them what you want to see ahead of the meeting. The frequency is up to you and your senior leader, but 3 times a year is common.
Use our template and guidance to think about what should be included.
You might ask that the report covers:
- Attendance
- Make sure you're evaluating the data you're given thoroughly and effectively
- Safeguarding
- Online safety is a big topic in schools at the moment, so use this as an opportunity to ask questions about how your school/trust are making sure pupils are safe online
- Vulnerable children
- Pupils with special educational needs (SEN)
- Pupils eligible for the pupil premium
- Finance and premises
- Health and safety
- Recruitment
- Parental engagement
- Staff wellbeing and continuing professional development (CPD)
- Additional support the headteacher/CEO needs from the governing board
Set up your governors and trustees with training
Our on-demand courses and learning pathways give all your board members the opportunity to learn at a time and pace that suits them, in the comfort of their own home.