Successfully Negotiating the Safeguarding Element of Ofsted Inspections

Make sure your safeguarding provision is up to scratch, prior to an inspection

For Ofsted, It's business as usual with inspection teams back in schools since September. The importance of the safeguarding element of the inspection has been further heightened by the impact of the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ movement, Ofsted’s subsequent review into sexual harassment and abuse and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance came into force in September and are supported by the DfE guidance Sexual violence and harassment between children in schools and colleges designed to help schools to both prevent and respond to reports of sexual harassment and violence between children. Here, Martin Cain provides some key pointers to help schools ensure that they are in a constant state of readiness for the safeguarding element of an inspection.

Culture and curriculum

Schools must be able to demonstrate that their safeguarding policies and procedures are translated into practical reality through the curriculum and staff behaviours. Schools should ask themselves the following questions and be prepared to respond to them from inspectors:

• Are all staff able to demonstrate that they know Part One of Keeping Children Safe in Education?;
• Is the safeguarding information on all of the relevant tabs of the school website up to date?;
• Do we have a strong culture of safeguarding and what does this look like?;
• What does a typical safeguarding day look like in our school?;
• How does our signage around school, promote safeguarding in the way that it relates to staff, pupils and visitors?;
• Is pupil supervision effective throughout the school day, for example, are staff always out on duty, are pinch points like toilets supervised appropriately and do pupils arrive at lessons on time?;
• Is staff and governor training in safeguarding and safer recruitment and selection up-to-date, recorded and appropriate to their roles?;
• How have staff and governors reacted to their training and can they articulate its content and impact?;
• How does the school provide staff and governors with the relevant information and guidance updates, and is this logged?;
• Do the school’s policies and procedures make it clear that sexual harassment, online sexual abuse and sexual violence (including sexualised language) are unacceptable?;
• Do the school’s policies and procedures also contain clear information about the appropriate sanctions that are in place for transgressions?;
• Are all pupils supported to allow them to feel able to report concerns about harmful sexual behaviour freely?;
• Do staff take all reports seriously, deal with them swiftly and appropriately and would this be the view of pupils and parents?;
• Are there appropriate procedures in place to handle reports about concerns that arise outside of school?;
• Is record keeping timely and comprehensive?;
• Do we have robust processes in place for monitoring the incidents that are uploaded to the safeguarding log and the effectiveness of our actions?;
• Do we regularly survey the pupil and parent voice on safeguarding and can we clearly demonstrate that we respond to the findings (the inspection team may share their pupil and parent voice feedback with the school)?;
• Does the school deal effectively with bullying and with parents and pupils who think that it does not?;
• As a school do we clearly acknowledge that ‘it could happen here’?;
• Does the Relationships and Sex Education curriculum specifically address issues around sexual harassment, online abuse, sexual violence and consent?;
• Is the Relationships and Sex Education curriculum age-appropriate and how does it relate to the assembly programme and the school’s engagement with external agencies?; and
• Can the school demonstrate that it is a learning school by, for example, acting swiftly on any lessons learned or regularly reviewing its procedures using the NSPCC self-assessment tool?

Record keeping

Schools should have the following records, including an appropriate analysis of them, readily available for the inspection team from the outset of the inspection:

• The number of cases that were uploaded to the safeguarding log the day before the inspection and details of how they were followed up;
• Exclusions, pupils taken off roll, incidents of poor behaviour and any use of internal isolation;
• Incidents of sexual harassment and/or sexual violence;
• Incidents of bullying, discriminatory and prejudiced behaviour, either directly or indirectly. This should include bullying that is categorised as racist, sexist, homophobic, biphobic, transphobic or towards disabled pupils;
• All referrals made to the DSL, to the LA and brief details of resolution;
• A list of pupils who have open cases with children’s services/social care;
• A list of pupils for whom there are multi-agency plans in place;
• Up to date attendance statistics;
• Resolved case studies available for sharing with the inspection team to demonstrate good safeguarding practice, where the school may have worked positively with parents and external agencies and which cover a range of issues, for example, harmful sexual behaviour, peer on peer abuse and a child missing education;
• It would also be advisable to have an example of a successfully resolved safeguarding complaint at hand; and
• The school improvement plan with the sections that refer to safeguarding work clearly signposted.