Safeguarding Self Evaluation Form

Children's Services is undertaking the whole system audit of school and college safeguarding practices in line with statutory guidance. Education settings are therefore required to submit the safeguarding self-review tool in line with the timescale detailed below. 

Paragraph 79 of Working Together to Safeguard Children states,

'Education providers, including multi-academy trusts, have a responsibility to play their full part in local safeguarding arrangements, including where their footprint extends across several local authority areas. This includes, but should not be limited to, responding to safeguarding audits of quality and compliance, as requested by the local authority and/or local safeguarding partners. This is to ensure that policies are consistent with the local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and relevant legislation and/or regulations.'  

In Norfolk, education settings have always been responsive to this request, and we have consistently had a return rate from approximately 90% of settings. Following feedback from educational settings, the safeguarding self-evaluation has been significantly revised to make it more concise and to reflect changes in local and national guidance. The tool forms the primary evidential basis for the Local Authority audit of safeguarding practice that will take place over the next two terms and the findings will be reported to the Norfolk Safeguarding Children Partnership.  

As in 2022, the evaluation tool is accessible to all educational settings via Norfolk County Council's My Schools section of the Norfolk Schools and Learning Providers site. Once you have logged on to the system, you will be able to access the tool via the 'School Performance' tab. Further guidance on completing the tool is available on those pages. 

What do I need to do?  

Unlike previous years, the LA has not set a time scale for groups of settings to complete the tool. We appreciate how busy schools and colleges are and the need to plan this activity carefully, so we are inviting all settings to complete the self-evaluation tool at their convenience during the Spring and Summer Terms but no later than 11 July 2025.  

It is crucial that you input the information on My School and do not download the Word document to complete as there is no facility to upload the self-review tool afterwards. 

All areas will need to be graded with a commentary.  Please note that you should not submit copies of supporting documentation, but it is important that you provide a rating and a supporting commentary of evidence for each question. If you do not include this information, it is likely that you will be asked to re-submit the tool.  

Your setting's previous self-evaluation will still be available on My School in the event that some information is the same from the last submission and therefore this can be transferred on to the updated document. 

If you work in a federation or partnership of schools one submission can be made but it is crucial that you inform the Education Safeguarding Team by emailing educationsafeguarding@norfolk.gov.uk so we can duplicate the information for all of the settings. 

Throughout the submission period the Education Safeguarding Team will check and review submissions but if you do have any queries, please email educationsafeguarding@norfolk.gov.uk  

If you have issues logging into My School, please email csepublishing@norfolk.gov.uk who will be able to support you.  

Thank you for your co-operation and support with this audit. The Education Safeguarding Team have provided a range of tools, guidance, webinars, and training modules to support the identified areas for practice development following the last audit. You can read previous analysis reports here.

Supporting webinar

To understand the purpose of the Safeguarding Self Evaluation and to support the completion of it, the Education Safeguarding Team will be delivering a webinar.

This will take place via Microsoft Teams; however, you do not need to have this application on your laptop. If you do not, then the webinar will open in an internet browser.

Booking:

This is no requirement to book a place in advance. Please join via the link below on the day

Microsoft Teams

Click here on the day/time above

Meeting ID: 355 292 699 584

Passcode: 9UE2z4Hb

The webinar will be recorded and placed here.