How to review your procedures for dealing with allegations against staff
Be confident when reviewing your procedures for dealing with allegations of abuse against staff. Know what they should include and get suggestions of questions to ask to make sure they're compliant and robust.
- Key facts
- What these procedures need to do
- 3 key questions to challenge these procedures
- Take a look at our model procedures
The Department for Education (DfE) withdrew its guidance on Statutory Policies for Schools and Academy Trusts on 7 March 2024.
Details of statutory policies have now been incorporated into the new governance guides for maintained schools and academies. Take a look at our summary of the new governance guides.
We’ve reached out to the DfE to clarify some of the detail on the statutory policy list in the new guides, and we will update our related articles with any updates in due course. Select ‘save for later’ at the top of this page to be notified when this article has been updated.
Key facts
- You must have procedures for dealing with allegations of abuse against staff (see section 6.5 of statutory policies for schools) – you might include them as part of your child protection and safeguarding policy
- You can delegate the approval of the procedures to an individual, a committee or the headteacher
- It’s recommended that you review them annually
- The headteacher and senior leadership team will write and be responsible for the implementation of the procedures
What these procedures need to do
When reading your school’s procedures, make sure they reflect Part 4 of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2023, which is the Department for Education’s (DfE) statutory safeguarding guidance.
The procedures should explain:
- The steps to follow when managing:
- Allegations that may meet the harms threshold
- Concerns that don’t meet the harms threshold ('low-level concerns')
- Who allegations should be reported to and that this should be done without delay
- Any additional steps for dealing with allegations against supply teachers, volunteers and contractors
3 key questions to challenge these procedures
1. What’s changed in this most recent update, and why?
Your school's procedures should be based on the latest version of KCSIE. The newest version of KCSIE for 2023 now mentions handling allegations about individuals or organisations who are using the school premises to run an activity for children.
Specifically, your procedures should now cover that, in the case of organisations of individuals using the premises, your senior leaders will follow your safeguarding policies and procedures and inform the local authority designated officer (LADO) – as they would with any other safeguarding allegation.
You’ll want to make sure your school leaders have included this new change in your school's procedures.
Your school leaders might also have updated the procedures in response to any incidents that have occurred in the school.
2. Are these procedures working, and being properly implemented? How do you know?
The procedures work if they’re being used and followed. Your headteacher (the case manager for most allegations) should be able to reassure you of this because they’ll be keeping clear records of any cases.
Ask for an update on any previous cases and find out:
- If allegations are being dealt with as quickly as possible
- Whether the steps in your procedures were followed
3. Can you talk us through how you’re going to encourage an open and transparent culture in which all concerns (including low-level concerns) are dealt with promptly and appropriately?
KCSIE makes a point about sharing low-level concerns and making this a whole-school responsibility – for example, making sure staff feel comfortable to share information about another staff member’s inappropriate behaviour early on, in order to safeguard children.
You’ll want your headteacher to explain how the school is working to create this environment.
Further questions to ask
Find more guidance on general questions you could ask when reviewing all policies.
Take a look at our model procedures
Our model child protection and safeguarding policy includes model procedures in appendix 3.
Note: we've updated this policy in light of KCSIE 2023, and it's currently with Forbes Solicitors for their review and approval – we'll add it here for your reference as soon as it’s ready (click ‘save for later’ at the top of this article page to be notified when we do).
This model document is not meant as a guide for writing your school's procedures, as that's your school leaders' job, but you can use it to give you a sense of what some good procedures might look like. You may find our other article, how to review your child protection policy, useful if you're reviewing or approving this, too.
For more policy support, see the policy bank.