Safeguarding Self Evaluations - update and initial feedback
Audit of School Safeguarding Practices 2024-2025
As per the news item from 4 March 2025 you will be aware that last academic year Children's Services undertook the whole system audit of school and college safeguarding practices in line with statutory guidance. We wanted to thank all of the schools and colleges who have completed their submission.
The Education Safeguarding Team are currently analysing the findings and writing an interim report on these. We are also contacting any educational settings who have not yet submitted their self-review.
The majority of the self-reviews demonstrated that settings have taken a robust approach to reviewing their safeguarding procedures and have reached thoughtful conclusions in relation to their assessments. Areas of strength included:
- Settings were clear that they meet the statutory requirements in respect of the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) role and have multiple staff trained to ensure that this is always cover for the role.
- DSLs have established a cycle of regular meetings to discuss cases of concern and discuss safeguarding practice more broadly.
- Electronic safeguarding systems are being used to identify trends and patterns by generating reports for specific concerns
- Clear systems are in place to ensure that every member of staff, volunteer and regular visitor is provided with information to support them to understand the setting's procedures.
The following themes for development were common in the submissions received:
- Participation in the Norfolk Multi-Agency Safeguarding arrangements and understanding the context of the Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership priorities.
- Reviewing online safety, particularly compliance with the DfE filtering and monitoring standards for schools and colleges and completion of an online safety self-review such as via the 360 safe or LGfL audit.
- Completion of a Prevent Risk Assessment which considers the setting's specific context.
- Settings wanting to do more work to support children who are young carers, and some talked about wanting to gain the Carer Friendly Tick Award.
In November 2025 the findings will be shared with the Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership Group and a final report will be published later in the Autumn Term 2025.
