The Department for Education (DfE) will explore whether to increase schools’ role in safeguarding arrangements through a pilot programme.
The government has consulted on whether education providers, including schools, should become statutory partners in safeguarding, which would require making changes to legislation.
Following the consultation, updated guidance on working together to safeguard children has been published by the DfE.
It focuses on multi-agency safeguarding arrangements between local authorities, care boards, education, police and others.
Guidance ‘strengthens’ schools role
In its consultation response, the DfE said the guidance has been updated to “highlight and strengthen” the role of education in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements (MASAs).
“We are exploring possible legislative changes alongside the publication of guidance, but like many respondents, we agree that careful consideration needs to be given to how this would be delivered in practice, and what the impact and potential burdens would be on education settings and other partner agencies,” the DfE said.
“We want to be certain that making schools a fourth partner would bring about the desired change in MASAs and that this could not be achieved via other routes.”
‘The wrong time’
Some respondents to the consultation supported education becoming a statutory partner in safeguarding.
Ofsted said this was necessary to make sure schools had “the right level of collaboration“ in MASAs.
However, the Association of School and College Leaders said in its response that now was not the right time to bring in such a change: “Given the shortages of resources and current recruitment and retention challenges in schools and colleges, ASCL believes that now would be the wrong time to propose that education becomes a statutory safeguarding partner.”
Some respondents also raised concerns about the role and engagement of multi-academy trusts as a barrier to schools becoming a statutory partner in safeguarding.
Ofsted said academy trusts would need greater clarity on how they would fit into local safeguarding partnerships as they might be based across more than one area.
The DfE has established a group of education leaders who will develop proposals on a strengthened role of education in safeguarding arrangements.
These will then be tested through the Families First for Children pathfinder programme.
Delays to information sharing advice
A Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel inquiry has previously warned that there were weaknesses in the sharing of information between safeguarding agencies.
The DfE was also running a consultation alongside this one on non-statutory advice for such information sharing.
The updated information-sharing advice was due to be published this month.
The DfE said it has been delayed until early 2024 owing to the consultation process raising “some fundamental issues which require further legal and policy consideration”.
One in five referrals of at-risk pupils to children’s social care comes from schools, according to the latest data.
A Tes investigation earlier this year found that as many as three-quarters of the safeguarding referrals from schools had resulted in no further action from local authorities.
Experts raised concerns at the time that, in some cases, referrals were resulting in no further action because local authorities were already involved, but that fact had not been communicated to schools.
The DfE advertised in September for a national child safeguarding facilitator to strengthen the role of education in early help and MASAs.
