Schools’ fears about the safeguarding judgment in Ofsted inspections are “out of proportion to what the reality is”, the watchdog’s national director for education has said.
Chris Russell emphasised that just 1 per cent of inspections in the 2022-23 academic year resulted in an ineffective safeguarding judgments, during an address to the Schools and Academies Show in Birmingham today.
He added that it was “extremely rare” for the “only issue” in inspections to be safeguarding – accounting for less than 0.1 per cent of inspections last year.
Russell said he did not think safeguarding being a particular concern for school leaders anticipating inspections was “a new issue”, but that the inspectorate was trying to address this through clarifying its handbook and presenting webinars to the sector.
