We take our safeguarding and child protection duties very seriously and deem it to be everyone’s responsibility to ensure the safety and welfare of all of our children and young people.

As an organisation,  safeguarding culture and compliance are two of the most significant areas of leadership. We have a dedicated, group-wide safeguarding team, which is led by the Strategic Development Lead for safeguarding.

Each of school has a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and at least one Deputy DSL, who reports into the academy leadership team and Academy Committee. The DSL takes responsibility for all safeguarding matters at an academy level.

On an annual basis, we carry out an ‘Academy Improvement Review’, which is led by a ‘Lead Reviewer’ (an executive or senior member of staff) and supported by a team of educational leaders.

Within the ‘Academy Improvement Review’, the safeguarding culture of the academy is tested. The behaviour of both students and adults are observed, alongside a review of health and safety duties, to check how well the safeguarding policy is being adhered to. The observations are reported and areas for development identified for which the responsibility to action lies with the Principal.

In addition to statutory policy and the ‘Academy Improvement Review’ cycle, a rigorous and auditor approved system of academy safeguarding checks will also be in place. Our audit process tests compliance on statutory aspects of practice, including:

• compliance on policy
• recording of safeguarding disclosures
• testing the efficacy of staff training
• safer recruitment
• single central record accuracy including DBS checks
• e-safety
• safeguarding culture

The audit process also cross references the ‘Academy Improvement Review’ conclusions by assessing the management of behaviour, quality of reporting and the supervision of children.

Our regime of checks lead to the development and embedding of good and best practice across the organisation.