Governors' role in monitoring the single central record

Learn what belongs on your school's single central record (SCR), your role in monitoring its compliance with safeguarding requirements and when you should – and shouldn't – check the SCR yourself.

Last reviewed on 20 June 2023See updates
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Contents
  1. Your job is to make sure the SCR is being monitored – not check it yourself
  2. Questions to ask your school leaders to make sure they're monitoring the SCR
  3. When it's appropriate for a governor to check the SCR 
  4. What should be on the SCR
  5. Storing the SCR
  6. Inspectors will ask to see your school's SCR early on in an inspection

Your job is to make sure the SCR is being monitored – not check it yourself

The single central record (SCR) is the central record of the safeguarding checks that have been carried out on all staff and other relevant people. 

We get a lot of questions about how to monitor it, and we know that many governing boards assign a governor – usually the governor with responsibility for safeguarding – to regularly check the SCR themselves to make sure it complies with the requirements under Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE).

School leaders: carry out the operational task of physically checking the SCR and making sure all of the relevant boxes are complete and that the document as a whole is up to date Governors: are responsible for the strategic task of monitoring that school leaders are keeping up