Teach Secondary -Issue 15.1

theoretical and actually start becoming meaningful. 4. Safeguarding the adults Student safeguarding can’t be separated from staff safety. The risk to adults in school will often be underestimated, but it is real. One such risk can be malicious allegations. A false accusation will still automatically trigger formal processes – and rightly so – But for the staff member involved, everything stops. And even when cleared, the impact can linger. Leaders must therefore provide clear policies, transparent processes and unwavering internal support where staff have acted appropriately. Another risk faced by staff is that of violence. Trauma doesn’t always present quietly – indeed, I’ve seen experienced, caring staff injured in a matter of seconds. Mitigation here will entail genuine de-escalation training, realistic staffing decisions and a culture in which taking a step back is seen as a mark of professionalism, not weakness. Protecting staff shouldn’t be seen as separate from safeguarding students, but very much part of it. 5.Home visits Home visits remain one of the most uncontrolled safeguarding risks that leaders accept. The rules here should be non-negotiable: • Go in pairs. • Log where you are and when you expect to return. • Agree on a clear exit code ahead of time that signals the need to leave immediately. You can’t control what happens inside a home, but you can control how you enter and how you leave. Courage isn’t a safeguarding strategy. Holding the balance The safeguarding office isn’t an administrative space, but rather a risk management hub. Every decisionmade there will be a response to some threat, whether known or emerging. We want certainty and we want guarantees, but safeguarding is about managing impossible trade-offs with imperfect information. If, at the end of the day, children and staff are safer than they were that morning, then the equation is holding. Forms don’t keep people safe. People do. Hannah Carter is an experienced headteacher working for The Kemnal Academies Trust, and author of the book, The Honest Headteacher (Teacher Writers, £12.99) WHATDOES THE DATA SAY? Student behaviour is often cited as an ongoing – and depending on who you ask, worsening – challenge to safeguarding within schools, so just how bad is it? Well, we can get at least a broad sense of what the data currently tells us from the latest National Behaviour Survey for the 2024/25 academic year. The first thing to note is that while 84% of parents expressed support for their school’s rules on behaviour, just 18% of pupils in Y7 to Y13 believed that said rules were ‘Applied fairly to all pupils all of the time’. Despite this apparent perception issue among pupils, an encouraging 95% of teachers reported feeling confident in their ability to manage misbehaviour in their school (with 32% of that group feeling ‘very confident’). That confidence may in part be down to behavioural support being more readily available than before, with 54% of teachers reporting that they’ve been able to access behaviour-related training and professional development opportunities – a marked increase from the 40% of teachers who were able to say the same in 2023. What about the daily view from the ground? In May 2025, 88% of school leaders, 63% of teachers and 57% of Y7 to Y13s felt able to say that their school had been calm and orderly ‘every day’ or ‘most days’ for the past week. The proportion of Y7 to Y13s saying they felt safe at school ‘every day’ or ‘most days’ in the past week meanwhile stood at 80% – a welcome improvement over the 73% who expressed those same sentiments in May 2024. Less positive, however, was the 70% of this year’s Y7 to Y13s who said they felt motivated to learn – down from 75% in April 2024. The full National Behaviour Survey for 2024/25 can be downloaded via tinyurl.com/ts151-SG2 “Templatesmake us feel compliant; theydon’tmake us safe” 45 teachwire.net/secondary S A F E G U A R D I N G