Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure schools co-operate with local safeguarding arrangements.

Safeguarding partners are under a statutory duty to safeguard and promote the wellbeing of all children in a local area. All three safeguarding partners have equal and joint responsibility for local safeguarding arrangements and must set out how they will work together and with any relevant agencies. Relevant agencies must act in accordance with those arrangements.

Schools, colleges and other educational providers have a pivotal role to play in safeguarding children and promoting their welfare. The safeguarding partners should make arrangements to allow all schools (including multi academy trusts), colleges and other educational providers in the local area to be fully engaged, involved, and included in the new safeguarding arrangements. It is expected that local safeguarding partners will name schools, colleges and other educational providers as relevant agencies and will reach their own conclusions on how best locally to achieve the active engagement of individual institutions in a meaningful way. Once designated as a relevant agency, schools and colleges, and other educational providers, in the same way as other relevant agencies, are under a statutory duty to co-operate with the published arrangements.

Following the Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges in June 2021, Ministers from the Department for Education, Home Office, and Department of Health and Social Care wrote to all 135 all safeguarding partners to request that they review their arrangements with schools, colleges, and education providers and set out their local offer to education.

We have also held a series of national events with safeguarding partners, education providers, and other government departments to understand emerging practice and barriers to effective working. These will form part of a wider programme of work to ensure that the arrangements that have been put in place are being utilised to their fullest by both safeguarding partners, and schools and colleges.