Management Information Sheet

Governing bodies of maintained schools have a duty under section 175 (2) Education Act 2002 to make arrangements for ensuring the conduct of the school are exercised with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of pupils at the school. Section 157 of the Act places the same requirements on Academies, Free Schools and Independent Schools.

The safeguarding self-review tool has been revised to reflect changes in local and national guidance, the Norfolk Safeguarding Children Board (NSCB) Priorities and learning from serious case reviews; new fields and revised fields are highlighted throughout the tool. The tool forms the primary evidential basis for the Local Authority audit of school practice that will take place over the next three terms and schools will be requested to submit a completed safeguarding self-review tool.

Rather than being produced as a word document, the review tool will be accessible to all schools via Norfolk County Council's My Schools section of the Norfolk Schools site from Tuesday 31st January. When you are logged on to the system, you will be able to access the tool via the 'School Performance' tab. Further guidance on completing the tool is also available on those pages.

Spot checks of statutory compliance:

In addition to audit through the self-review process the Intervention Team, with support from the Adviser - Education Safeguarding, will commence a series of safeguarding compliance checks with schools during the Spring Term 2017. These checks will be unannounced visits focusing initially on statutory compliance in line with the Safeguarding Compliance Checklist for Governors - July 2016. As audit activity develops, these checks will be used to test and quality assure audit returns.

What do I need to do?

All maintained schools, free schools and academies will be invited to submit a completed self-review tool for analysis in 3 groups over three terms as follows:

If your school appears in the Group 1 list of schools at the end of this document, please complete the self-review tool via the My Schools website by 28 April 2017.

If your school is not included in Group 1, you will be sent a request via a further Management Information Sheet at the beginning of the term the return for your school is required. If your school is not named in Group 1, but you wish to submit a completed review during this cycle, please feel free to do so.

Thank you for your co-operation and support with this audit. The last audit of school safeguarding procedures was completed in 2015. A total of 90% of schools that were contacted provided the information; the overall findings of the audit identified gaps in knowledge across the wider school workforce and training and guidance was tailored to meet these needs accordingly. A summary of the findings is attached for your information.

Date to be completed

Group 1: 28 April 2017

Submission of the Safeguarding Self-review Tool: GROUP ONE

If your school appears in this list of schools, please can you complete and submit the revised self-review tool by no later than 28 April 2017. Please note that you should not submit copies of supporting documentation but it is important that you provide a rating and a supporting commentary of evidence for each question. If you do not include this information, it is likely that you will be asked to re-submit the tool.