Safeguarding expert and former police detective, James Simoniti, has undertaken an analysis of some of the common safeguarding issues that have emerged from Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI) inspection reports. Here he provides some insights on this research and offers some strategies to help avoid poor safeguarding judgements.
“Safeguarding students is a primary duty of school leaders and staff in independent schools.
In the vast majority of England’s independent schools, these responsibilities are delivered robustly and raise no concerns.
But in a few circumstances errors and oversight can happen, leading to inspectors declaring that a school is not meeting safeguarding standards.
The reasons behind these situations vary, but there are common issues which affect schools in both the independent and state sectors.
If you consider ISI inspection reports from the 2023-2024 academic year, focusing on the small number of reports of schools that were not meeting safeguarding standards, there were 12 main reasons for safeguarding to be deemed as not meeting the required standards (see panel)…”
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