School Safeguarding Audit 2024/25

The audit tool is for internal use only. All the questions are based on national or local guidance which can be found in the audit guidance document.
The audit tool has had changes from previous versions, so please be aware of this before completing it.

The audit can be completed section by section. Should further support be needed during the audit competition window, please see our FAQs below, and note that there are drop-in sessions to assist you throughout the audit completion period.

After audit completion, present the audit tool to the relevant accountable body for your setting, (governing body, management committee, or board) with the findings evidenced.

The audit self-assessment period is from w/c Monday 4th November 2024 with returns by Friday 28th February 2025.
Please note that once the self-assessment has been submitted, it is no longer possible to make further changes.
Please submit your completed and ratified response with full governing body sign-off in Excel format on the Safeguarding Audit for Schools 2024/2025 tool.  Please do not convert the tool to any other format including PDF.
Ensure that the tool is attached to an email and is not a link to a cloud shared drive.

Following the completion of the audit, settings can produce an action plan to address changes required, or areas to improve or develop.
An action plan is essential to address the findings of the audit and ensure continuous improvement in safeguarding practices.
The data from the audit is collected and analysed with key findings shared with the NYSCP executive board.  From this, recommendations are made, and priorities and areas for improvement are identified with progress tracked and monitored over time.
The findings of the audit are reported to schools and colleges by the NYSCP, with the recommendations shared at the annual DSL conference in September 2025.

The audit involves assessing the safeguarding compliance of educational settings, and in particular to focus on the presence and implementation of appropriate safeguarding policies and procedures, to ensure staff training and learning to prevent and respond to safeguarding concerns This also helps foster continuous improvement and a safer working culture.

The audits aim to ensure that policies are consistent with local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and relevant legislation and/or regulations.

All schools in North Yorkshire who are registered with the Department for Education are required to complete the safeguarding audit to evidence that they are fulfilling their statutory responsibilities and are under a duty to provide information to the safeguarding partners, and this includes.

Maintained Schools:
These are nursery schools, schools and further education institutions, including sixth-form colleges that are funded by the local authority.

Non-Maintained Schools:
These include Academies and Multi Academy Trusts that are not maintained by the local authority.

Independent Schools:

Free Schools:
These are a type of academy, which are also publicly funded but have more freedom than maintained.

Alternative Provision Schools and Special Schools:
These cater to children who cannot attend mainstream school, and that provide an education for children with a special educational need or disability.

Settings can identify the overall effectiveness of their safeguarding practice and be assured that they are meeting their statutory obligations. Audits can also identify any potential risks and vulnerabilities in safeguarding practices.

Safeguarding is a critical aspect of Ofsted inspections.

Understanding the extent of safeguarding arrangements can help schools provide the necessary evidence.

For maintained settings, audit information can guide visits with School Education Advisors, as well as similar arrangements within academies and independent schools.

A safeguarding audit can assist schools in improving staff training and raising awareness of child protection issues.

By identifying training needs and knowledge gaps, schools can offer targeted training to ensure all staff members are prepared to recognise and address safeguarding concerns effectively. This can help encourage a culture of vigilance and ensure that safeguarding remains a top priority embedded within the school community.

An audit can help schools build trust with parents and the wider community.

By demonstrating a commitment to safeguarding and transparency, schools and colleges can reassure parents that their children are safe and well-protected. This can enhance a setting’s reputation.

The audit tool allows schools to produce a forward action plan.

Plans can be used as part of the school development plan alongside the guidance of a policies and procedures list.  The audit timeline allows settings to use this information from the audit to put planning in place and make any changes for the start of the 2025 – 26 academic year.

These benefits help ensure the safety and well-being of children and contribute to the overall effectiveness of the school’s safeguarding practices. By ensuring robust safeguarding practices, schools create a safe environment contributing to the Being Young in North Yorkshire Strategy goals of being safe, happy, healthy, and achieving, enabling them to thrive. (Being Young in North Yorkshire).

The audit is led by the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) within each educational institution. The DSL is responsible for overseeing the completion of the audit and ensuring that all safeguarding practices and policies are thoroughly reviewed and documented. The DSL should report the completion of the audit and any areas for development to their governing board.
 
The NYSCP recognises that all staff should know about safeguarding the children in their settings appropriate to their role, and that various members of school teams will contribute to the daily running and monitoring of practices.  It is therefore encouraged that settings involve appropriate staff members in the completion of the audit where applicable to both contribute to a culture of safeguarding and safeguarding awareness, but also to gain an accurate assessment and oversight of procedures, and practices and for overall improvement. The audit provides an opportunity to test and reflect on processes, and the NYSCP encourages a collaborative approach where staff and students’ voices are sought. It is essential that whoever is submitting the self-assessment is authorised to do so on behalf of the school or college, and that there is support and oversight by senior leadership including governors.  The responsibility for local arrangements within schools lies with this leadership – The Local Governing Body, Trustees, or Proprietors of each school who are legally accountable for the schools they represent. Their sign-off is a crucial part of the audit process to ensure that their governance challenges and tests the audit and that they accept any actions that are identified to address areas of development.
Please see https://youtu.be/3SGF-DVUb5Q for guidance and a video on how to use the audit tool.

To make the process as manageable as possible, the self-assessment is conducted using Microsoft Excel which is familiar and accessible to most settings. We understand that completing the audit can be a significant undertaking for schools and colleges, therefore, the Excel tool allows colleagues to input responses, work section by section using the individual subject tabs, over time, save progress, and print or save a copy of the completed self-assessment and related action plan.

The North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NYSCP) plays a crucial role in ensuring the safety and well-being of children and young people in North Yorkshire and exists to safeguard children by promoting effective multi-agency collaboration between statutory partners and relevant agencies.
The partnership does this by providing, supporting, and enabling local organisations and agencies to work together at all levels, helping professionals working with children, young people, and families, to promote children’s safety and welfare.
The three statutory safeguarding partners responsible for the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements in North Yorkshire are:

Director of Children and Young People, North Yorkshire Council (NYC)
Chief Nurse of the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB)
Assistant Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police (NYP)

A relevant agency is any organisation or agency deemed necessary by the safeguarding partners to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children. This includes schools, early years and education providers, voluntary, community, and social enterprises, sports clubs, and more.

The three statutory safeguarding partners combined with relevant agencies continue to work together and have agreed on Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA), which sets out how the requirements of Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023) are achieved.

For further information about the NYSCP, the work that they do, and how they operate, please see What is the NYSCP?

Through the audit questionnaire, there is reference guidance documentation to support schools as they commit their responses as well as links to useful information and key legislation.

HM Government Guidance referenced includes but is not limited to:
Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023
Keeping Children Safe in Education 2024 – Referenced as KCSIE
Early Years Foundation Stage – Referenced as EYFS
What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused
Information Sharing (Advice for Practitioners)
Maintained Schools Governance Guide (Gov.uk)
Academy Trust Governance Guide (Gov.uk)

An action plan is essential to address the findings of the audit and ensure continuous improvement in safeguarding practices.
An action plan can specify what actions are to be taken, who is responsible, and timeframes for completion.  If an area of high risk is identified, immediate remedial action should be taken and recorded together with any long-term actions to address concerns.
 
The School Safeguarding Audit has been designed to allow for the easy recording of any actions and to assist settings in the recording of this information. When accepted the actions should be transferred to the school development plan and managed via the school’s governance procedures.
Please see School Safeguarding Audit Tool Video Guide 2024 – YouTube for guidance and a video on how to use the audit tool.

Actions can be copied and pasted from each tab/section and copied into the Actions tab in order to produce an action plan for future use.  This is the only section where you can add columns and/ or rows to the worksheet to record information as appropriate, and to add comments that are relevant to your setting.
For further information, please see the corresponding video walkthrough School Safeguarding Audit Tool Video Guide 2024 – YouTube

The NYSCP School Safeguarding Audit is carried out between November 4th, 2024, and February 28th, 2025.  All schools must submit their final response, approved by their Local Governing Body, Trustee(s), or proprietor(s) no later than February 28th, 2025.
The School Safeguarding Audit Tool must have been approved by the Local Governing Board, Trustees, or proprietors before submission. 

The NYSCP has a responsibility to support local organisations and agencies to work together in a system that ensures children are safeguarded and their welfare is promoted.  However, the responsibility for the local arrangements within schools lies with the Local Governing Body/Trustee(s)/Proprietor(s) of each school who are legally responsible for the school they represent.  Additionally, they are responsible for acceptance of the findings of the audit and any actions they identify to address any areas of development. 

While it is appreciated that some schools, academies, and independent/private schools may have developed their own Safeguarding Audit Tools, these tools will vary across the different schools we have in the county, and therefore the NYSCP is unable to accept the submission of these or annual safeguarding statements to governing bodies/trustees/proprietors, as these cannot be adequately benchmarked against the sections of the audit to ensure a consistent interpretation and comparison of audit responses.   

Yes. If your school is part of a federation or a multi-academy trust you must submit a separate completed school safeguarding audit for each school with a DfE Unique Reference Number.  While it is understood that federations and multi-academy trusts will most likely share policies, and procedures, to standardise the approach across the federation/trust, the level of implementation will be different in each school, especially for those schools which have recently converted.  The audit must reflect the uniqueness and current safeguarding arrangements in each school.

The NYSCP recognises that schools and college staff have limited time and we have therefore devised new audit questions with education partners, keeping the thoroughness and integrity of previous audits and making the audit increasingly useful and relevant.

Should you need support in completing the audit, there are drop-in sessions to help with specific topics in addition to the FAQ’s, videos, and written guidance.  Should you have further queries please email nyscp@northyorks.gov.uk

The audit is a statutory requirement for all schools and educational institutions to ensure they are fulfilling their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.  Completion of the whole audit by each school gives the NYSCP a full picture and a greater understanding of the safeguarding processes in schools across North Yorkshire and allows both schools and the NYSCP to better identify actions based on this data. Incomplete audits could mean missing critical compliance issues and could lead to incorrect conclusions or recommendations.

The NYSCP has introduced a policy list to assist establishments to assist with assurance purposes.  The list includes both mandatory and advisory policies allowing settings to have confidence that they have policies in place, that have staff read and understand them, and that they are regularly reviewed and updated, with any changes passed on. A comprehensive policy list helps schools adhere to all relevant laws, regulations, and educational standards and directs them to key documents.

Please submit your completed and ratified response with full governing body sign-off in Excel format on the Safeguarding Audit for Schools 2024/2025 tool.  Please do not convert the tool to any other format including PDF.

Ensure that the tool is attached to an email and is not a link to a cloud-shared drive.
Completed responses should be sent to nyscp@northyorks.gov.uk no later than 28^th February 2025.

Please note that once the self-assessment has been submitted, it is no longer possible to make further changes.

The NYSCP Business Unit will combine and analyse the results of individual school audits and work with the School Improvement Service to create a report based on the answers given to give a picture of the current state of safeguarding in North Yorkshire schools. The report will highlight common themes and issues faced by schools across the county.
NYSCP representatives will invite a small sample of schools to discuss their audits to ensure consistent interpretation of the audit process. This is planned to occur at the end of June to the beginning of July after examinations/testing.

The final report will be submitted to the NYSCP Practice Learning Subgroup for approval and to identify necessary actions. Priorities and areas for improvement are identified, with progress tracked and monitored.

The audit results will be shared with all schools via a Seven Point Briefing, the DSL Network Webinars, and the DSL conference in September 2025.

The Learning Report for the previous Audit can be accessed here: https://www.safeguardingchildren.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/School-Safeguarding-Audit-2022-2023-FINAL-1-1.docx

The forum will be used to help ensure accurate benchmarking of results and to identify themes and common issues found in the audit.  The discussion will also comprise of showing examples safeguarding practice and supporting evidence, to encourage a two-way dialogue between establishments and the NYSCP and aims to highlight areas where policies and procedures may be lacking and how the partnership can be more effective in its support.
The NYSCP Business Unit will conduct a randomised sample of all returned safeguarding audit responses, selecting at least 3% of schools to attend a forum and roundtable discussion with NYSCP representatives.

Discussion forums will be composed of up to three members, including representatives from the Local Authority, Police, and/or Health sectors. Forum members will be chosen by the NYSCP.

Selected settings will be invited by email to the Headteacher with forum visits being held at their own school setting for a wider discussion around audit results and to answer any related questions.

The audit grading classification operated on a scale of 1 to 5. When identifying a score, each school needs to consider whether the minimum standards for addressing safeguarding needs have been achieved.



Each number corresponds to the colours shown above with the tool being designed to immediately show the status of each answer.

To complete the self-assessment, establishments should consider each statement and assign a self-assessed grade that is believed to most accurately reflect how the setting’s arrangements comply with the statement at the time of completing the audit. For each category of question, schools are requested to identify evidence that will support their answers. This does not include providing copies of evidence but should refer to what evidence is available to how participants have arrived at their grading. E.g., the name/location of a policy that supports a specific category and the date it was last reviewed.

It is not appropriate to state that a requirement is “not applicable” only because the current cohort of children within the school does not fit certain criteria.  If a school believes that a requirement is not applicable and selects 1, a full rationale must be provided to explain why the requirement does not apply.  For example, if a school is not aware of any private fostering arrangements it is not appropriate to select 1 (not applicable) because no children currently meet these criteria. Arrangements must be in place should this change in the future.

Please note, for most requirements, the not applicable option has been removed to show the status of each answer immediately.

Should further actions be identified (irrespective of the grading given), please type in the Actions Required field, which will in turn populate the Audit Progress Tracker tab to produce a running total and then a final count of actions.

If you want to add a new paragraph in the Evidence or Actions Required field, please select Alt and Enter for a carriage return, please do not add rows.