Inspection is a critical lever in the accountability system. It provides a ‘point in time’ snapshot of an education provider, including its approach to tackling sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online. Inspection evidence can be aggregated to provide insights at a system level and to influence behaviour. While it provides broad assurance, the inspection model is not designed or resourced to investigate or address specific incidents in schools and colleges. If the government wishes to support schools to develop their approach to tackling sexual harassment and violence, it will need to employ a range of approaches, of which inspection is just one. Statutory guidance sets clear expectations for schools and colleges to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people. Generally, school and college leaders tell us that the guidance is clear, although they would appreciate all guidance being in one easily accessible place and updates to be made in good time before the school year starts so they can plan training accordingly. The phrasing in ‘Working together to safeguard children’ could also be updated to explicitly state that all types of schools and colleges are expected to be one of the ‘relevant agencies’ that LSPs need to engage with and that multi-agency audits should be completed regularly. There is a gap in guidance for how schools and colleges should respond when there are lengthy investigations or no prosecution or conviction. Some school and college leaders also want clearer guidance on where their responsibilities start and end, for example with incidents of harmful sexual behaviour that happen outside school. Developing clearer guidance in this area would help school and college leaders assure parents, children and young people that they are making decisions in their best interests and in line with guidance. To assess whether the current safeguarding framework and guidance for Ofsted and ISI inspectors were strong enough, we carried out an internal review of:
both inspection frameworks and Ofsted’s schools and further education and skills inspection handbooks
evidence bases gathered on inspection of 108 schools and colleges, including state-funded schools, independent non-association schools that Ofsted inspects and independent schools that ISI inspects
safeguarding guidance and training for inspectors of both inspectorates, with a particular focus on peer-on-peer harmful sexual behaviour
We also reviewed our previous handling of complaints about schools and colleges that focused on peer-on-peer sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online. This included complaints about the non-association independent schools that we inspect. You can find further details of this internal review in the methodology. ISI also carried out a similar review of complaints it has received that focused on sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online, which it shared with the review team. Frameworks, handbooks, guidance and training The review looked at our ‘Inspecting safeguarding’ guidance, which covers early years, education and skills settings.[footnote 63] It found that this clearly outlines how inspectors should inspect how well schools and colleges respond to peer-on-peer abuse, such as sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online. Since the introduction of the education inspection framework (EIF) in September 2019, the school inspection handbook has also made specific reference to peer-on-peer abuse. All inspectors were trained on how to consider such abuse during inspection earlier that year. The handbook was updated recently to reflect the government’s changes to guidance on RSHE. All school inspectors have received mandatory training on what this means for inspection practice. However, the review also found that, although Ofsted’s education inspectors are trained using ‘Inspecting safeguarding’, the further education and skills inspection handbook does not specifically refer to sexual violence and sexual harassment, including online. We will therefore update it to include this. ISI inspects independent schools’ compliance with The Independent School Standards Regulations.[footnote 64] ISI reports on the extent to which the independent school standards are being met. The ISI inspection framework provides for 2 types of routine inspection: regulatory compliance only or educational quality with focused compliance. Both inspection types always consider whether the school meets the expected independent school standards in welfare, health and safety. These standards include whether a school is meeting the statutory standards, which includes safeguarding expectations as set out by the government. Although the independent school standards do not make explicit reference to peer-on-peer sexual violence and harassment, they require the school’s leaders to actively promote the well-being of the pupils. Leaders must also follow all statutory guidance relating to safeguarding, which includes peer-on-peer abuse. When inspecting compliance with the relevant standards, ISI inspectors record whether the school’s safeguarding policy sets out its response to peer-on-peer abuse and whether it includes procedures to minimise the risk of peer-on-peer abuse. In the visits we did as part of this review, inspectors found that talking to single-sex groups was an effective way to gather evidence about sexual harassment and violence. Therefore, both Ofsted and ISI will make it explicit to inspectors that they should do this during future inspections wherever possible. This will help inspectors to understand how a school’s or college’s approach to tackling sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online, is working. The review of Ofsted’s training showed that all school and further education and skills inspectors were trained in 2018 and 2019 on peer-on-peer abuse. This included sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online. The training is covered in different modules for education and social care inspectors. For example, further education and skills inspectors do not complete the same training as school inspectors. ISI provided Ofsted with a chronology of training since 2017. It also showed us examples of its inspector training materials relating to safeguarding and peer-on-peer abuse. Most training was mandatory. Some was optional, such as a workshop on peer-on-peer abuse delivered at a conference held for all ISI inspectors in January 2019. Training materials referenced government statutory guidance on safeguarding, including guidance relating to peer-on-peer abuse, sexual harassment and violence. ISI reported that it held follow-up discussions to make sure that inspectors understood the implications for inspection activity. For 2021/22 and beyond, Ofsted and ISI will work together to produce and jointly deliver further training on inspecting safeguarding in education settings. This will include issues of peer-on-peer abuse. State-funded and independent schools and colleges have to implement statutory guidance. This should ensure that they have a common approach to safeguarding, including peer-on-peer abuse. Ofsted and ISI will continue to work together to prioritise a consistent standard of inspection practice in this area. Previous inspections We reviewed the evidence bases for 93 inspections under Ofsted’s EIF. The inspections all took place between September 2019 and March 2020, when routine inspections were suspended due to the pandemic. The review found that evidence bases demonstrated that inspectors have a good knowledge of ‘Keeping children safe in education’. They use this knowledge to determine the questions they will ask on inspection. Scrutiny of inspection evidence found that inspectors had explored children and young people’s experiences of sexting and upskirting, and what school and college staff had done in response. Following notification of a school inspection, school leaders are asked to present their records and analysis of sexual violence and sexual harassment, including online, in school by 8am on the first day of the inspection. This is set out as a requirement in our school inspection handbook. In September 2019, when this requirement was brought in, we expected to see a substantial flow of evidence about these issues, given that there was already considerable information about their prevalence in schools. In fact, this has not been the case. It is surprising that, in the inspections we looked at for the review, only 6% of schools gave evidence of sexual violence and sexual harassment, including online, in response to the request. Forty-six per cent of the schools provided a nil return. These figures may reflect the gap between staff’s and children and young people’s knowledge and perceptions, as discussed earlier. The remaining 48% of schools neither provided information nor a statement that there was no relevant information. In most of the inspections where no information was provided, inspectors did not record how they followed up with leaders to determine whether a nil return was an accurate picture. As a result, we cannot yet say that EIF inspections are sufficiently assessing the extent and nature of sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online, between peers in schools. We will mandate that, in future, inspectors should follow up and record schools’ responses to the request. We will quality assure future evidence bases to make sure that this happens. We will also reiterate this through inspector training. The requirement for leaders to provide records and analysis of sexual violence and sexual harassment, including online, is not currently in our further education and skills inspection handbook. We will amend this. In future, on notification of college inspections, leaders will be asked to supply this information to inspectors. Inspectors will also be mandated to follow this up with college leaders. ISI will also ask for this information from schools on notification. The review also found that inspectors seek evidence from a variety of sources to triangulate their findings about safeguarding. For example, they speak to staff, children and young people, governors, senior leaders, support staff and external colleagues such as local authority representatives. When a safeguarding issue emerges on inspection, they follow it up. Furthermore, the scrutiny of Ofsted inspection evidence shows that when inspectors have focused on the PSHE curriculum (known as a ‘deep dive’) in EIF inspections, they examine relationships and sex education very effectively. However, unless there is a deep dive into PSHE, there is little time on inspection to look closely at a school’s or college’s approach to creating a culture of safeguarding around peer-on-peer sexual harassment and violence. Inspection resource constraints limit the number of deep dives to 3 or 4 per inspection. Ofsted’s inspectors cover a sample of curriculum areas rather than every subject in depth. It is therefore not possible to review PSHE fully on every inspection. We also reviewed 15 evidence bases of ISI inspections. We found that they included appropriate consideration and clear evaluation of how well schools managed their procedures and policies related to safeguarding and handling complaints. The review also found careful pre-inspection planning and appropriate recording of evidence in relation to the independent school standards. However, the inspection evidence did not always identify how the curriculum developed children and young people’s understanding of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. It also did not always show how inspectors cross-referenced leaders’ and pupils’ views with other evidence, such as record-keeping. In a few evidence bases, inspectors appeared to give weight to the views of leaders, who responded that reporting systems and effective pastoral care were in place, rather than to those of pupils, where a significant minority had concerns. Handling of complaints about schools that refer to peer-on-peer sexual harassment and violence A review of Ofsted’s handling of complaints about schools we inspect found that they are dealt with comprehensively. We also review annually how we handle them. All complaints about independent schools were referred on to the DfE, and those about colleges to ESFA. When a complaint about a school or college refers to sexual abuse, we may notify the local authority for a maintained school or ESFA for an academy, free school or college. We may also inspect immediately or use the information to inform the school’s or college’s next routine inspection. When ISI receives complaints about the schools it inspects, it currently refers to the DfE only those that relate to the independent school standards. ISI has told us that all complaints about sexual abuse are referred to the DfE. ISI has recently reviewed its policy and from September 2021, all complaints (whether they refer to the independent school standards or not) will be referred to the DfE. The DfE, in collaboration with ESFA, Ofsted and ISI, may wish to review how complaints are handled. As a result of this review, both Ofsted and ISI will update training and inspection handbooks where necessary. This will strengthen inspectors’ ability to inspect how schools and colleges are tackling peer-on-peer sexual harassment and sexual violence, including online.