The local context in a section 175 or 157 safeguarding audit
Short answer
Many local authorities and safeguarding partnerships ask schools for an annual safeguarding audit. This guide sets out how to answer its questions about local risks with evidence rather than impressions, and what to attach.
What the audit is
Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 places the safeguarding duty on local authorities and the governing bodies of maintained schools; section 157 and the regulations made under it do the same for independent schools, which include academies and free schools. Many local authorities and safeguarding partnerships ask each school to complete an annual self-assessment against those duties, often called a section 175 or section 157 audit. The format differs from area to area.
The local context questions
Most audits ask, in some form, whether the school understands the safeguarding risks in its local area and how that shapes its policy, training and referrals. The guidance behind the question is plain: staff should “consider whether children are at risk of abuse or exploitation in situations outside their families” (Keeping children safe in education 2026, paragraph 21), and the child protection policy should be one that “is reviewed annually (as a minimum) and updated if needed, so that it is kept up to date with safeguarding issues as they emerge and evolve” (paragraph 123).
Answering with evidence
This is our advice, not wording from the guidance. A strong answer names its sources and its date, and ties each point to an action.
- What children's services record across the authority, beside England, and which harms outside the home stand out.
- What is recorded around the gate and on the routes in, with the data month.
- The places and times pupils are most exposed, named.
- The partnership and its threshold document, and how staff report a concern about a child and about a place.
- What the school did: the training, the policy paragraph, the staff briefing, and the governors' report.
What to attach
The dated evidence itself, the paragraph from the child protection policy, and the governors' minute that received it. A Safeguarding Context report and its staff briefing are designed to be that attachment. See a sample, or start from your authority's figures in harm outside the home, authority by authority.
Quotations are from Department for Education guidance, Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.