The education sector has a duty of care for children, young people or vulnerable adults to ensure that those under their care are protected from harm inside and outside of their institutions. Safeguarding is the term used to describe the measures put in place to ensure the protection of health, wellbeing and human rights of individuals under their care.
These measures include:
While everybody working in education should have heard of the term ‘safeguarding’, you might not be sure what safeguarding in schools actually means. Simply put, when a child is in school, the school is responsible for keeping them safe from harm and abuse. The school should create a safe learning environment, identify children who are suffering from or may be at risk of harm and take suitable action.
Everyone in the school who comes into contact with children and their families and carers has a role to play in safeguarding children. In order to fulfil this responsibility effectively, all professionals should make sure their approach is child-centred. This means that they should consider, at all times, what is in the best interests of the child.
To help protect children in their care, schools should have:
As part of their safeguarding responsibilities, schools should also be teaching children how to protect themselves. Personal, social and health education (PSHE) lessons should explain, for example:
Serious child harm cases reported by councils in England rose by nearly 20% during the first year of the COVID pandemic. There were 536 serious incident reports in England during 2020-21, up 87 (19%) from 449 in 2019/20, and an increase of 41% on the number of incidents recorded five years ago.
The majority of serious incident notifications continued to relate to children living at home in 2020-21. The proportion of notifications relating to children living at home increased from 66% in the first half of 2020-21 to 75% in the second half.
The Department for Education (DfE) have said that: “We know that the pandemic may have exacerbated the challenges many vulnerable children, including those in care and their families, may have faced but the increase in serious incident notifications is of concern. That is why we prioritised vulnerable children throughout the COVID pandemic by keeping schools open to many of them.”
Supporting and protecting vulnerable children is one of the important roles played by schools to ensure all children are safe, loved and thrive. During the COVID pandemic lockdowns, child safeguarding concerns often went undetected because of the closure of schools, colleges and some childcare settings.
Effective safeguarding in schools is so important for identifying the warning signs of any abuse or harm to children and alerting the appropriate authorities in order to help victims of harm or abuse as soon as possible. School staff, especially teaching staff, get a unique insight into how children are developing, behaving and interacting with others.
They are more likely to notice signs of abuse, whether these are physical abuse or mental abuse. Teachers can also use their professional skills to teach children about the dangers they face inside and outside of school, how to protect themselves and where and how they can get help.
Effective safeguarding relies on clear and easily understandable policies, systems and procedures. Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure there is an effective safeguarding policy in place together with a staff code of conduct which should include information on staff/student relationships and communications including the use of social media.
All staff including temporary staff and volunteers should be provided with the school’s safeguarding policy and staff code of conduct on induction. The safeguarding policy should describe procedures which are in accordance with government guidance, be updated annually, be signed off by the governing body, and be available publicly either via the school or college website or by other means.
Headteachers should ensure that the policies and procedures adopted by governing bodies, particularly concerning referrals of cases of suspected abuse and neglect, are followed by all staff.
Each school and college should have at least one designated safeguarding lead who will provide support to staff members to carry out their safeguarding duties and who will liaise closely with other services such as children’s social care. There must be a designated safeguarding lead available at all times, so it is good practice to ensure that there are enough staff trained to carry out this role, to provide the cover advised by statutory guidance.
Designated Safeguarding Leads must have specific training every two years at a minimum.
Everyone working with children whether teaching, non-teaching, volunteers and other staff, should have safeguarding training at induction and once every three years at a minimum. It is good practice to refresh training annually to comply with statutory guidance which stipulates that annual updates are necessary.
School governors need to understand their responsibilities about safeguarding and have an overview of what occurs in their school.
At least one member of any interview panel must have completed a Safer Recruitment course. Senior staff and governors should complete this course too.
Contextual safeguarding is an approach to safeguarding that involves understanding and responding to children or young people’s experiences of harm outside of their families. It recognises the relationships young people form with their communities, schools and online circles that can lead to abuse, harm or exploitation.
As many parents have little or no influence on these relationships outside of the family home, it is the duty of those with safeguarding responsibilities, such as workers in the education sector, to recognise the need to intervene where necessary.
Schools and educational settings need to consider the location and culture of their school or college and assess the risks that children and young people may be exposed to, both inside and outside of the school or college community.
A contextual safeguarding approach would recognise that children and young people may risk experiencing significant harm in extra-familial contexts, and seek to include these contexts within their prevention, identification, assessment and intervention safeguarding activities. It may be necessary for schools to consider interventions to change the systems or social conditions of the environments in which the harm or abuse has occurred.
Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSE) contains information on Contextual Safeguarding in Paragraph 52, stating that:
“All staff should be aware of the range of risk factors which increase the likelihood of involvement in serious violence, such as being male, having been frequently absent or permanently excluded from school, having experienced child maltreatment and having been involved in offending, such as theft or robbery. Advice for schools and colleges is provided in the Home Office’s Preventing youth violence and gang involvement and its Criminal exploitation of children and vulnerable adults: county lines guidance.”
In schools graded by Ofsted as outstanding, safeguarding permeates all aspects of school life.
Key features of outstanding practice include:
What might this look like in practice? Here are some examples:
Schools and colleges and their staff form part of the wider safeguarding system for children. Schools and colleges work with social care, the police, health services and other services to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. This multi-agency system is usually co-ordinated by a local authority Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH).
When a school or college reports a concern to the MASH team, they make assessment of the risk to the child and make a decision on what to do to best protect that child. To make an informed decision the MASH team shares and gathers information from partner agencies, children and their families. The most appropriate intervention is agreed in response to the child or young person’s identified needs.
In the majority of local authorities, the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) is the single point of contact for all professionals to report safeguarding concerns.
The range of organisations that make up a MASH can include but is not limited to:
Schools and colleges can request a consultation with a MASH social worker to enable them to talk through concerns and consider if a MASH contact is appropriate.
Statutory guidance for schools and colleges, Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSE), defines safeguarding as:
This is statutory guidance from the Department for Education (DfE) and is issued under:
Schools and colleges in England must have regard to this guidance when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. For the purposes of this guidance children includes everyone under the age of 18.
The Teachers’ Standards 2012 state that teachers (which includes headteachers) should safeguard children’s wellbeing and maintain public trust in the teaching profession as part of their professional duties.
It is a crime to have a sexual relationship with a child aged under 16, and it is also an offence for an adult to have a sexual relationship with a young person under 18 years if the adult is in a “position of trust”, such as a teacher, with that young person. This covers relationships between school or college staff and students. It applies as long as the young person is under 18 years, even if they are over the age of legal consent.
The governing body of a school or college has a duty to ensure that the school or college meets its statutory responsibilities and to ensure that the children and young people attending the school or college are safe. This applies to all school settings including maintained schools, academies and free schools.
Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 places a duty on the governing body of schools, and regulations under section 157 about safeguarding pupils in independent schools (which include academies).
Requires academy trusts, to have arrangements in place to ensure they:
In addition, the Education and Inspections Act 2006 places a duty on governing bodies of maintained schools to promote the wellbeing of pupils at the school, including protection from harm and neglect.
Safeguarding must also take into consideration the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Primary schools can help protect pupils by creating a safe environment through robust safeguarding practices and by ensuring that all staff and volunteers involved with the primary school do not pose a risk to children.
Primary schools teach children about staying safe, and making sure they feel confident to approach a member of staff if they have a worry or problem.
the processes of safeguarding" width="1200" height="350" />
Safeguarding issues which arise in secondary schools are often different in nature to those experienced in primary schools, as a result of the increasing maturity of the young people involved. During secondary schooling, children and young people are maturing, acting more independently and taking on increased responsibilities. This may mean they encounter more risky situations, in addition to those which arise from neglect or abuse within their family.
Children and young people at secondary school level will be more involved in their own safeguarding so it is important to ask:
Research suggests that at secondary school age, maltreatment can be masked by ‘difficult’ behaviour and the young person treated as a problem rather than vulnerable. Risk and neglect may also not be addressed because there is an assumption that young people can cope more easily than younger children. These findings indicate the importance of understanding young people’s own perspectives on their difficulties and what may make it hard for them to seek help.
When young people feel secure and safe in school, they flourish both academically and emotionally. Vulnerable young people can benefit from a combination of strong structural safeguarding support from professionals alongside peer-centred interventions as appropriate for the school context. This is why including safeguarding issues into the curriculum is important so that the whole school community including the students are involved in safeguarding each other.
Schools and colleges and their staff form part of the wider safeguarding system for children where agencies are expected to work together to ensure children and young people are safeguarded and their welfare protected.
Their role is to:
Teachers and other school and college staff are an important connection that children and young people have with the outside world and are often the people that they respect and will speak to first. A school or college is not just where children and young people are educated, it is where they develop and eventually become adults, and it should be a safe space where they are able to discuss any problems they may have, without fear of judgement.
By keeping a close eye on children and young people in your care, you can help with any situations that may come up and make a real difference in the child or young person’s life.
