Is a crime map enough evidence of local risks for Ofsted?
Short answer
A crime map is a start, not the whole answer. It shows what the police record around an address; it cannot show what children's services record about harm to children, where pupils gather after school, or how the school has acted, which is what inspectors ask about.
What inspectors look for
Ofsted's toolkit puts this first among the safeguarding factors inspectors gather evidence on:
“protecting pupils from maltreatment and harm, whether within or outside the home or online; schools are vigilant, maintaining an attitude of ‘it could happen here’”
Neither Ofsted nor Keeping Children Safe in Education names a document a school must hold. What an inspector is testing is whether leaders know the risks pupils face beyond the building, stay alert to them, and act on them.
What a crime map shows
A crime map shows the incidents the police record, month by month, at anonymised map points around an address. UK Crime Statistics, our sister service, is one, and it also compares an area with the national picture. That is useful evidence: it tells a designated safeguarding lead what is recorded on the streets pupils use, and whether it is rising or falling.
What it cannot show
- Harm to children. Police records describe incidents and places, never who was involved. What children's social care records at assessment across the authority, such as criminal and sexual exploitation, gangs and going missing, is the evidence closest to children, and it is not on any crime map.
- The places and times that matter for pupils. The parks, stops and stations where pupils wait after school, and the hour after the bell, which Keeping Children Safe in Education asks schools to be alert to.
- The local arrangements. The partnership, its threshold document and the route for reporting a concern.
- What the school did. An inspector wants to see the line from the context to training, the policy and the governors' report. A map has no line to draw.
A stronger answer
Use the crime map as one chapter, not the whole account. Add the authority's children's services figures (see harm outside the home, authority by authority), name the places pupils gather, name your safeguarding partnership, and write what the school does about each point into a dated paragraph in the child protection policy. A quiet area described as quiet, with the data that shows it, is a good answer too.
That is what a Safeguarding Context report does for one school. Read a sample report.
Quotation from Ofsted guidance, Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.