How to Conduct Investigation Interviews in Schools

A practical guide for headteachers, principals, proprietors, investigating officers and governors

Interviews are where school investigations are usually won or lost. They’re also where most of the damage is done, almost always by somebody acting in good faith and trying to get to the bottom of something quickly.

A leading question asked in the first hour can undermine a case that would otherwise have been straightforward. A pupil interviewed before a referral can compromise a police investigation. A member of staff interviewed without notice can make a whole process unfair.

It’s understandable. Many leaders tell us they’d never been trained in this and were working it out as they went. That’s an honest position and a common one, because most school leaders investigate rarely and under pressure when they do.

This guide covers how to do it properly, and the situations where the right answer is not to interview at all.

Should You Be Conducting This Interview at All?

Stop and check three things before anybody sits down.

Is this a matter for the police or children’s social care? If a criminal offence may have been committed, or a child may be at risk of significant harm, the school doesn’t investigate in parallel. Contact your local authority designated officer and take direction, with safeguarding advice alongside it. Interviewing first can contaminate evidence and cause real harm to a case.

Are you the right person? If you’ll chair the hearing, or you’ve already expressed a view, or the matter concerns somebody you report to, you shouldn’t be conducting the interview. Where the matter concerns a senior leader, see when safeguarding concerns involve a senior leader. Where that leaves nobody suitable internally, that’s a signal to consider an independent investigation.

Is it in scope? Interview against the terms of reference, not against your curiosity. Investigations that widen mid-interview become impossible to conclude.

How Do You Prepare for an Investigation Interview?

Four things, and the preparation determines the quality of everything that follows.

Read everything first. An interviewer who hasn’t read the file will spend the meeting establishing basic facts the records already contain, and will miss the questions that actually matter.

Write your questions down, grouped by topic, open rather than closed. You won’t follow them exactly and having them stops you drifting.

Decide who else is in the room. At disciplinary and grievance hearings an employee has a statutory right to be accompanied by a colleague or trade union representative, and most school policies extend a similar right to investigation meetings. Offer it in writing and check what your own policy says.

Give notice. Tell the person in advance what the meeting is about, in enough detail that they can prepare, and share the evidence you intend to put to them. Ambushing somebody produces a defensive interview and an unfair process.

How Should You Conduct an Investigation Interview?

Explain the purpose at the start. What the investigation is about, what your role is, what will happen to the notes, who will see them, and what the confidentiality expectations are. Say plainly if you can’t guarantee the account will stay confidential.

Ask open questions first. “Tell me what happened.” Then narrow. Don’t begin with the specific allegation.

Never lead. The difference between “what happened when you went into the store cupboard” and “did he follow you into the store cupboard” is the difference between usable and unusable evidence.

Ask for the basis of what they say. Did they see it, hear it, or were they told about it later? Second hand accounts are worth having and must be labelled as such.

Follow up vagueness. Sometimes, often, a while ago and quite regularly all need pinning down to dates and numbers.

Don’t signal your view. Not by expression, not by tone, and not by the questions you choose to pursue. An interviewee who works out what you think will start telling you it.

What Notes Should You Take During an Investigation Interview?

Contemporaneous, factual and shared.

Have somebody take notes so you can concentrate on the conversation. Those notes will form part of the investigation report. Record what was said rather than your interpretation of it, and use the person’s own words for anything significant.

Offer the notes back for the interviewee to read and comment on. Where they disagree with something, record the disagreement rather than amending the note. A record showing two accounts is more credible than one that was quietly changed.

If you’re considering recording an interview, take advice first and get consent. Practice varies and the data protection position needs thinking about properly rather than decided in the room.

Keep the notes securely and treat them as personal data, because they are. Anyone involved may make a subject access request, and notes written carelessly read very differently months later.

How Do You Interview Pupils During a School Investigation?

With considerably more care, and frequently the answer is that you shouldn’t.

If a child may have been harmed, or a criminal offence may have occurred, the school doesn’t interview. Contact children’s social care or the LADO and take direction. A well meaning conversation can compromise a formal process and can require a child to repeat a distressing account more times than necessary.

Where it’s appropriate for the school to speak to a pupil, keep it simple. Ask open questions, don’t press, and stop if the child becomes distressed. Record what they said in their words rather than tidying it into adult phrasing.

Have a trusted adult present, ideally one the child chooses. Think about communication needs, which in a special school or alternative provision is not a formality. A pupil who uses a communication aid, or who’s non-verbal, or who finds direct questioning distressing, needs an approach designed around them rather than a standard interview.

And be honest with yourself about capacity to consent and to understand. Your safeguarding advisers are the right people to plan this with, not your HR process.

How Do You Handle a Difficult Investigation Interview?

Several situations come up regularly.

Somebody refuses to attend. Record the invitation and the refusal, offer an alternative such as written questions, and proceed on the evidence available. Don’t treat refusal as an admission.

Somebody becomes distressed. Stop. Offer a break, offer to reconvene, and record what happened. Continuing produces poor evidence and does harm.

New allegations emerge. Note them, don’t pursue them in that interview, and take a decision separately about whether they fall within scope or need a fresh process.

Somebody wants to speak off the record. There’s no such thing in an investigation. Say so kindly and before they start, rather than afterwards.

The account changes. Record both versions and the sequence. That’s evidence in itself and it’s not necessarily dishonesty. People remember things differently under stress.

From Our Experience

The most common error we see isn’t dishonesty or carelessness. It’s an experienced leader asking leading questions because they already have a view of what happened and want to confirm it quickly.

That view is frequently correct, which is what makes it dangerous. A sound conclusion reached through a flawed process won’t survive a hearing, and the school ends up unable to act on something it was right about.

Many leaders tell us the moment they realised was reading their own notes back weeks later and seeing how many questions contained the answer.

The second pattern is interviewing pupils too early. Almost always well intentioned, almost always because somebody wanted to establish quickly whether there was anything in it, and occasionally very damaging to a child and to a criminal process.

Schools that do this well slow down for one hour at the start and check who should be involved before anybody sits down.

A Common Misconception

“Recording feels heavy handed, so we will just take a few notes.”

It’s an understandable instinct, particularly in a small school where everybody knows everybody and a formal process feels disproportionate.

But brief notes are what fail at a hearing. A record saying “discussed the incident, staff member accepted it happened” tells nobody anything six months later, and it can’t be tested by the person it describes.

Proper notes protect everybody. They protect the person being interviewed, who can see and correct what’s attributed to them. They protect the school, which can show what was asked. And they protect the children involved, because a process that holds up is one that can actually result in action being taken.

Questions for Leaders and Governors

• Have we checked whether the LADO, social care or the police should be involved before interviewing anybody?
• Is the person conducting interviews genuinely separate from whoever will decide?
• Did we give notice and share the evidence in advance?
• Do our notes record what was said, or what we concluded?
• If a pupil needs to be spoken to, who is planning that and with what communication support?

Our Perspective

Interviewing well is a professional skill and most school leaders have never been taught it, which is nobody’s fault and worth acknowledging.

The principles are learnable in an afternoon. Check first whether you should be doing this at all. Prepare properly. Give notice. Ask open questions and never lead. Record what was said and let people see it. Stop when you should.

Get that right and an investigation produces findings a school can act on, which matters because the point of any of this is usually a child. A process that collapses helps nobody, least of all the pupil whose experience started it.