How to Write a School Investigation Report

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

The report is the part of an investigation that survives. The interviews are forgotten, the chronology gets lost, and in two years the only thing anybody can point to is a document.

That document may be read by a governing body, a complainant, a member of staff, a solicitor, a regulator or a tribunal. Most school investigation reports are written as though only the first of those will ever see it.

Many leaders tell us they’d done the investigation well and then struggled with the writing, because nobody had ever shown them what a usable report looks like. It’s an entirely reasonable place to get stuck.

In this guide we’ll cover structure, how to write findings, the difference between fact and opinion, and the things that most often make a report unusable. The process that leads up to it is set out in our guide to school investigations.

What Is a School Investigation Report For?

To answer the questions in the terms of reference, on the evidence, so that somebody else can make a decision.

That framing solves most writing problems. If a paragraph doesn’t help answer one of the questions, it doesn’t belong. If it answers a question nobody asked, it creates a liability.

It’s worth being equally clear what the report isn’t. It isn’t a decision, it isn’t a sanction, and in most cases it isn’t a recommendation about what should happen to a person. The governing body, trust board or proprietor decides, and commissioning an independent investigator doesn’t transfer that responsibility.

How Should a School Investigation Report Be Structured?

A structure that works for complaints, conduct and safeguarding investigations alike.

1. Introduction. Who commissioned the investigation, when, and under what policy.
2. Terms of reference. Reproduced in full, with the numbered questions. If the scope changed during the investigation, say so and say why.
3. Methodology. What documents were reviewed, who was interviewed and when, what was requested and not provided, and any limitations.
4. Background. The minimum context needed to understand the findings. Not a history of the school.
5. Chronology. Dated, factual, sourced.
6. Findings. Question by question, in the order of the terms of reference.
7. Conclusions. Short. What the findings mean taken together.
8. Recommendations, if you were asked for them.
9. Appendices. Documents relied on, interview notes, the terms of reference.

Be honest in the methodology about limitations. A report that pretends to a completeness it doesn’t have is easy to attack, and saying “two witnesses declined to be interviewed” strengthens a report rather than weakening it.

The chronology does more work than people expect and is frequently the section a reader relies on most.

How Do You Write Findings of Fact?

Take each numbered question. Set out the evidence relevant to it. State the finding. Then state the reasoning that connects the two.

The reasoning is what’s usually missing. A report that lists evidence and then announces a conclusion leaves the reader unable to test it, which is exactly what a panel or a tribunal will want to do.

Where evidence conflicts, say so and explain which account you preferred and why. “Both accounts were consistent on the sequence of events and differed on what was said. I preferred Ms A’s account because it was corroborated by the contemporaneous email at appendix 4” is a finding somebody can rely on. “There was a disagreement about what was said” is not.

Where you can’t reach a finding, say that too. Not every question can be answered, and an honest “I am unable to determine this on the available evidence” is far better than a manufactured conclusion.

What Is the Balance of Probabilities in a School Investigation?

The standard of proof for an internal investigation. Is it more likely than not that this happened?

Name it in the report and apply it consistently. Two things go wrong here.

Some reports apply a criminal standard by instinct, requiring near certainty, and conclude that nothing can be established. That’s the wrong test for an employment or complaints process and it leaves schools unable to act on things they should act on.

Others don’t name a standard at all, which makes the findings impossible to test. Stating the standard is a single sentence and it does a lot of work.

Where a disciplinary process or a criminal investigation is running in parallel, the school’s process may need to pause and the standards remain different. Take advice rather than assuming.

How Do You Separate Fact, Evidence and Opinion?

Label everything, and the labelling protects you.

Fact is what you’ve found on the evidence. Evidence is what somebody said or what a document shows. Opinion is your assessment, and it belongs only where you were asked for it.

Attribute every account. “Mr B stated that” rather than “it became clear that”. The second phrasing hides whose account you’re reporting and whether you accepted it.

Keep speculation out entirely. Phrases like “it seems likely that the culture may have contributed” are ungrounded, unhelpful and quotable, and they’re the sentences that turn up in a solicitor’s letter.

Be especially careful about characterising people. “Mr B was unhelpful during the interview” is an opinion about a person. “Mr B declined to answer questions 4 and 7” is a fact, and it says the same thing better.

What Language Should an Investigation Report Use?

Plain, neutral and specific.

Write for a reader who wasn’t there and doesn’t know your school. Avoid internal shorthand, acronyms and job titles that mean nothing outside the building.

Use names and roles consistently, and decide at the start whether you’re anonymising. Half-anonymised reports where somebody is identifiable from context are the worst of both.

Where children are involved, use initials or pupil references rather than names, and include only what’s necessary to the findings. A child’s personal information shouldn’t be circulating in a document about an adult’s conduct beyond what the question requires.

And write every sentence as though the person it describes will read it. In most cases they eventually will.

What Should You Leave Out of an Investigation Report?

Five things.

Anything outside the terms of reference. If something significant emerged that’s out of scope, flag it separately rather than folding it in.

Views on sanctions, unless you were explicitly asked. Recommending dismissal in a fact-finding report compromises the decision maker.

Personal data not needed for the findings. Every additional detail about a child, a family or an uninvolved member of staff is a data protection question you didn’t need to answer.

Editorialising. The report shouldn’t tell the reader how to feel.

Padding. Length isn’t thoroughness and it makes the findings harder to locate.

Who Should Receive the Investigation Report?

Decide this at the outset and record the decision in the terms of reference, because deciding afterwards looks like a decision made to suit the outcome.

Ordinarily the commissioning body receives it. The person investigated will usually be entitled to see the material relied on, and in a disciplinary process the ACAS Code expects an employee to be given the evidence before any hearing.

A complainant is generally entitled to an outcome and the reasoning, which isn’t necessarily the full report, particularly where it contains third party personal data. Take advice on redaction rather than either releasing everything or refusing everything.

Store it securely and treat it as personal data, and check your retention policy covers it. Anyone named may make a subject access request.

From Our Experience

The reports that fail at a hearing usually fail for the same reason. The finding was right and the reasoning wasn’t shown.

We often read a report that sets out evidence carefully for two pages and then states a conclusion in a single line, with nothing connecting them. A panel can’t test that, so it either accepts it on trust or rejects it, and neither is what the school needed.

It’s understandable that this feels wrong. Many leaders tell us the hardest discipline was leaving things out. Something troubling emerged that wasn’t in scope, and the instinct to include it is strong. Flagging it separately protects the report and still gets it addressed.

The other thing we see is opinion creeping into findings, almost always well intentioned. An investigator who describes somebody as defensive or evasive has given the reader an impression rather than evidence, and it’s the sentence that gets quoted back.

A Common Misconception

“A longer report looks more thorough.”

It reads as padding, and it makes the report harder to use.

A governing body trying to make a decision needs to find the findings. A forty page document with the answers distributed through it invites a decision made on the summary, which is exactly what a careful investigation was meant to prevent.

Thoroughness shows in the chronology, in the reasoning attached to each finding, and in the honesty of the limitations section. Not in length.

And there’s a reason to keep it tight that matters more than any of that. Most school investigations exist because something happened to a child or because an adult’s conduct affected one. A report that’s clear enough to be acted on quickly serves that child. One that takes three weeks to digest doesn’t.

Questions for Leaders and Governors

• Does the report answer the numbered questions, and only those?
• Is the standard of proof named and applied consistently?
• Can we follow the reasoning from evidence to finding for each question?
• Is opinion clearly separated from fact, and attributed where it appears?
• Did we decide who receives the report before the investigation started?

Our Perspective

A good investigation report is short, structured and testable. It answers what it was asked, shows its working, admits what it couldn’t establish, and stops.

Write it for the reader who wasn’t there and who may be reading it in two years with a solicitor beside them. That reader is unforgiving of vagueness and entirely persuaded by clear reasoning.

Get it right and the school can act, which is the point of the whole exercise. Somewhere behind most of these documents is a child or a member of staff waiting for a decision, and a report that can be relied on is what lets somebody finally make one.