What to look for in a contextual safeguarding report or tool
Short answer
Eight tests to put to any report, dashboard or service that claims to describe a school's local context, from whether it quotes the guidance it answers to whether it can ever identify a pupil.
Put these to anything that claims to describe your school's local context, including this site. They are our tests, drawn from what the guidance asks and what can go wrong.
Eight tests
- Does it quote the guidance it answers? Every part should trace to a requirement in Keeping Children Safe in Education, the Ofsted toolkit or, in Wales, Keeping Learners Safe, in the guidance's own words with the paragraph. If it cannot say which requirement it meets, it is decoration.
- Does it describe the context, never rate the school? A score, a grade or a ranking for a school invites exactly the wrong reading by parents, inspectors and the press. The area can be busy; the school is not the area.
- Does it go beyond crime? Police records describe places, not children. The evidence closest to harm to children is what children's social care records at assessment across the authority. Ask whether it is included.
- Can it ever identify a pupil? Small counts should be suppressed, figures about harm to children kept to the whole authority, and sensitive fields such as ethnicity in stop and search records never used.
- Does it state its limits and its dates? Every figure should carry its source, its period and what it cannot show. An undated figure cannot be reviewed next year.
- Does it write into the documents you use? A map or a dashboard is not a policy paragraph. Look for the child protection policy paragraph, the governors' paragraph, a staff briefing and the questions an inspector may ask, answered.
- Is it right for Wales, if you are in Wales? Keeping Learners Safe, the regional safeguarding board and Estyn throughout, with Welsh sources, and never Ofsted.
- Does it fit how schools buy? One order for a trust's whole estate, a price shown before you commit, a yearly refresh, and nothing that renews or charges without being asked.
How Safeguarding Context answers them
Each test above is a rule the report is built on. Read a sample report and check it against the list, and see the pricing and the questions buyers ask.