Governor training

Where the expectations come from

For years the reference point was the DfE's Governance Handbook. It was withdrawn on 7 March 2024, and its content now sits in two guides, both first published on 19 November 2025 and updated in July 2026: the maintained schools governance guide and the academy trust governance guide. Each has a section on induction, training and development, and they say almost the same thing.

In a maintained school, "A governing body is responsible for" allocating a governance training and development budget, identifying induction and ongoing development needs, "providing an induction for new governors, associate members and the governance professional", identifying specific training such as safeguarding, Prevent and keeping pupils safe online, "ensuring that all governors and the governance professional have read and follow part 2 of keeping children safe in education guidance", and encouraging everyone to develop their knowledge and skills. The academy trust guide gives trust boards the same list for trustees, local committee members and the governance professional, pointing to the part of KCSIE on the management of safeguarding.

The law adds a duty on local authorities. Section 22 of the Education Act 2002 requires the local authority to "secure that there is made available to every governor, free of charge, such training as they consider necessary" for the effective discharge of their functions, which is why many maintained schools buy governor training through their local authority's governor services. There is no equivalent statutory duty for academy trustees; the trust board provides and funds its own.

None of this makes a particular course mandatory. What the guides make clear is that training is part of the job. Both say that a governor or trustee who "persistently fails to attend training or development may be in breach" of the board's code of conduct, and the maintained schools guide says the chair may then need to consider whether the individual is suitable for the role.

Induction: what a new governor should have before they vote

Induction is the one piece of training both guides make the board responsible for providing to everyone, and the easiest to leave to chance. A good induction is planned by the governance professional and the chair, and usually covers:

• The role. The board's core functions – vision, ethos and strategic direction; holding the headteacher to account for educational performance; overseeing the school's finances – and the difference between governance and management.
• The school or trust. Its context, its improvement priorities, its latest inspection and its performance information, with a visit arranged through the headteacher.
• How the board works. The instrument of government or articles of association, the committee structure and scheme of delegation, the calendar of meetings and the governance professional's role.
• Conduct. The code of conduct, the Seven Principles of Public Life, confidentiality, and declaring interests for the register.
• Safeguarding. Reading Part two of Keeping children safe in education and completing safeguarding and child protection training, covered below.
• Checks and information. The enhanced DBS check for maintained school governors and the checks the trust makes on trustees and local committee members, and the details that will be published on the website and on Get Information about Schools.

Induction should begin before the new governor's first meeting. A new parent governor who is asked to vote on the budget on their first evening, without having been told what the budget covers or what the scheme of delegation allows, has been appointed but not inducted. The guides also expect induction for the governance professional and for associate members, who are easy to forget because they do not vote on the full board.

Safeguarding, and the training that goes with a role

Safeguarding is the training every governor needs. Paragraph 87 of Keeping children safe in education 2026 (KCSIE), the statutory guidance in force from 1 September 2026, says that governing bodies and proprietors "should ensure that all governors and trustees receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection (including online) training at induction". That training should equip them to provide strategic challenge and to test and assure themselves that safeguarding policies and procedures are effective, and it "should be updated regularly". Paragraph 86 adds a senior board-level lead for safeguarding, who usually needs more than the general course. Our safeguarding training records guide covers how that training is logged alongside staff training.

Other training follows the roles individual governors take on:

• Safer recruitment. Where governors sit on an interview panel, KCSIE asks that those involved in recruitment have appropriate safer recruitment training, and in a maintained school regulation 9 of the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2009 requires at least one member of a selection panel to have completed it. That includes the governors who appoint a headteacher.
• Finance. The academy trust guide and the Academy Trust Handbook (paragraph 1.31 of the 2026 edition) expect appropriate financial training, covering financial management, control, monitoring and reporting, for trustees and in particular for finance and audit and risk committee members. Maintained school finance committees need the same understanding to oversee the budget.
• Cyber security. Both guides say that at least one governor or trustee should complete cyber security training.
• Link roles. Governors who lead on special educational needs, safeguarding, careers or health and safety need training on that area; the guides signpost sector organisations for several of them.
• Panels and hearings. Governors who hear exclusion reviews, staff disciplinary or capability appeals, or complaints need to understand the procedure they are applying before the hearing, not during it.
• The chair. Chairs and vice-chairs benefit from development for the role, and succession planning, which the guides expect, depends on it.

The pattern is proportion. Not every governor needs every course; every role on the board needs someone who has had the training that role requires, and the board needs to know who that is.

Training comes from several places, face-to-face and online: the local authority's governor services for maintained schools, the diocese for church schools, the trust's own training programme for trustees and local committees, and national bodies such as the National Governance Association, whose Learning Link e-learning modules are one option. Whatever the source, choose it against the roles and responsibilities the skills audit identified and the school improvement priorities the board is overseeing, not by what happens to be on offer this term. This guide covers England; boards in Wales and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements, such as the Education Authority's governor training programme in Northern Ireland.

How Ofsted and trust boards see it

Ofsted does not inspect governor training as such. It inspects governance. The school inspection toolkit for inspections from 7 September 2026 says inspectors consider the extent to which governors and trustees "are knowledgeable about their statutory duties and carry them out effectively" and support and challenge leaders effectively, and it lists governors or trustees not carrying out their statutory core functions among the reasons leadership and governance may be graded as needing urgent improvement. The operating guide tells inspectors to meet those responsible for governance, usually without school leaders present. What shows up in that conversation is whether governors understand their role, the school's priorities and their safeguarding duties; training is how they come to, and the record is how the board can show it.

In a multi-academy trust the trust board is responsible for induction and development across its governance, including local committees, and the academy trust guide expects boards to evaluate their governance using skills audits that "inform individual's development plans" and "inform induction design". A trust can therefore set a minimum training expectation for local committee members, provide it centrally, and ask the governance professional to report completion to the trust board. The Academy Trust Handbook also asks new trusts to include an assessment of their governance, including the board's skills, in the governance statement in their first year's accounts, and established trusts should do the same.

The maintained schools guide asks for the same loop: regular skills audits, aligned to the school's strategic plan, that inform recruitment, "training and development plans" and induction, with regular review of the board's effectiveness and external reviews at significant points of change. Training that does not follow from the skills audit is activity; training that closes a gap the audit found is governance.

What the board should record

No regulation prescribes a governor training record, but the board cannot meet any of the expectations above without one. The maintained schools guide asks boards to "accurately document" evidence of the board's discussions and decisions and any evaluation of its impact, and a training record is part of that evidence. A simple, complete record usually holds:

1. For each governor, trustee, local committee member and associate member: the date appointed and the date induction was completed.
2. The date each person confirmed they had read Part two of KCSIE, renewed when a new edition takes effect each September.
3. Safeguarding and child protection training: date, provider and level, and when it is next due under the board's own refresh cycle.
4. Role-specific training: safer recruitment for panel members, financial training for finance and audit and risk committee members, cyber security, link-governor training, and hearing and panel training.
5. The board's training and development plan and budget, drawn from the latest skills audit.
6. A report to the board, at least annually, showing completion against the plan, minuted so the board can show it considered it.

Keep it where the governance professional can maintain it and the chair can see it; a spreadsheet or the training log in a governance platform both work. KCSIE allows schools to add the dates of safeguarding and safer recruitment training to the single central record as non-statutory information, which some do for governors. It is personal data, so include it in the school's or trust's retention schedule, and hold certificates as evidence behind the record rather than as the record itself.

Excused, deferred, stepped down: the training decisions made by message

A training record lists courses, but the decisions that matter most about governor training are made one to one, usually by message on personal phones. The chair messages a new governor to say the safeguarding course is booked and she can skip the October meeting's training slot. A trustee admits in a direct message that he has never done the finance module and asks to be taken off the audit committee. The SEND link governor tells the clerk the local authority course clashes with work and asks whether an online module will do instead.

Each of those is a governance decision, not an administrative one: an exemption the chair granted, a committee place given up because the training was never done, a substitution someone has to agree. Both guides say a governor who persistently fails to attend training may be in breach of the code of conduct, so the reasons and the chair's answers are what show the board managed a gap rather than overlooked it. Held on personal phones, some belonging to people who will leave the board this year, they are the first part of the record to disappear. When a trust asks a local committee for its completion figures, the board can show who was trained but not why the gaps it knew about were there. Confirmations that governors have read KCSIE are the same kind of evidence, and our safeguarding training records guide covers the updates chased by message.

The fix is not to stop the chair and the clerk handling training by message; that is how it gets done. It is to have those exchanges where the school or trust holds them, and to move each decision into the record. ComplyChat provides a channel for the governing board and its governance professional, with everyone added told that it is on the record and able to object or leave. A mobile number verified by SMS is an identity on it, which matters because governors rarely have a school account. On paid plans the lasting record files into the school's or trust's own Microsoft 365 once the tenant is connected, under its own retention rules. It is not a training platform or a learning management system, and it does not deliver or certify courses. ComplyChat Free is personal messaging with one private group, direct messages and three calendar months of recent history, with no Microsoft 365 archive; upgrading cannot restore expired history.

A question for the next full board meeting: which governors has the chair excused from training, or allowed to defer it, this year, and would the answer come from the training record or from the chair's phone?

Official guidance and your next step

The primary sources are the DfE's maintained schools governance guide and academy trust governance guide, paragraphs 86 and 87 of Keeping children safe in education 2026, section 22 of the Education Act 2002 for maintained schools, and for trusts the Academy Trust Handbook. Ofsted's expectations are in the school inspection toolkit and operating guide. Quotations are from those sources as published in September 2026; KCSIE paragraph numbers change most years.

This guide is a practical starting point for governing boards in England, not legal advice. Your local authority's governor services, your diocese or your trust's governance team can tell you what training they provide and what they expect of you.

Then do one thing: ask the governance professional to produce a one-page training record for the whole board before the next meeting – induction date, KCSIE Part two confirmation, safeguarding training date and role-specific training for every name – and put the gaps on the agenda.