You may be aware that Ofsted have recently announced new changes to the School Inspections Handbook, detailing a number of updates.

Although the changes are minor, we’ve compiled a list of the updates and key changes for your setting to be aware of, from a safeguarding perspective.

Safeguarding Updates September 2023 

In September 2023 the school inspection handbook made changes to reflect the changes they have made in how they inspect safeguarding.  

They: 

• Updated the monitoring policy to include early monitoring inspections and added new paragraphs on monitoring programmes for inadequate schools. 
• They added a new section on monitoring programmes for schools judged inadequate solely due to ineffective safeguarding (early monitoring inspections). 
• Added new paragraphs on deeming of monitoring inspections that are inadequate with serious weakness due to ineffective safeguarding and they stated that final feedback meeting for inadequate schools with serious weakness solely due to ineffective safeguarding. 

Safeguarding Updates October 2023

Building on from September’s updates, in October 2023 the school inspection handbook provided more detail on what evidence inspectors will ask schools to provide in relation to safeguarding, to prevent unnecessary workload for schools, they clarified that: 

• Inspectors will want schools to provide details about adults living on school sites. 
• They clarified that inspectors will look at attendance when carrying out ungraded inspections of schools. 
• Minor changes to take account of the new Department for Education’s exclusions and suspensions guidance.  

All of these updates relate to safeguarding in its widest sense. 

Read more about the key changes and access the School Inspections Handbook here.

If Safeguarding is important to you and your school, you can keep up with the latest news and advice via our SFE Safeguarding Newsletter. 

You may remember a project that we shared with you at the start of last year.

FGM and language – how the way in which we communicate about safeguarding issues and the choices we make when doing so affect the understanding and buy-in of the entire school community

The project, conducted by The University of Birmingham in conjunction with Services For Education and BAFGM (Birmingham Against Female Genital Mutilation), has commenced and we have already identified themes that occur or that are missing in many of the commonly used FGM educational resources.

We also led a working group with colleagues from the children’s workforce to discuss our findings and to talk through school staff’s lived experience of delivering these materials.

This month, we are sharing our initial findings with you in our latest blog:

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Language, Disconnect and Safeguarding Culture

Our funded research is now looking towards the next phase of the project, which will involve focus groups of young people within schools, followed by reports of feedback which we will share with materials developers.

Long-term we want to drill down on what impact the language used in educational resources has on understanding, and what language connects with young people and their families.

Our end goal is to identify resources that have more sensitivity and clarity and potentially long-term to develop specific resources, but we can’t do that until we have done this vital piece of in-depth work.

Find out more about the project here. and if you would like to get involved, please feel free to email us at safeguarding@servicesforeducation.co.uk

This month, our updates come to you in the form of our newest blog:

Keeping Children Safe In Education 2022 – what was new back in September and how do we really check we are adhering to it in our setting?

This guidance was last updated on 1st September 2022 when some key points were reworded or newly introduced. After a term of it being in force, it is a good time to reflect upon whether you and your staff are aware of and have acted upon those changes. Read more.

Access the KCSIE documentation here.