Ofsted Safeguarding: What Met and Not Met Really Mean

A practical guide for headteachers, principals, proprietors, governors, trustees and designated safeguarding leads

Of everything on a report card, this is the line leaders look at first. It’s the one judgement with no middle ground, and that makes it feel different from the rest.

It’s understandable that leaders find the binary unsettling. Every other evaluation area gives you a scale, a sense of direction and somewhere to improve towards. Safeguarding gives you met or not met, and nothing in between.

Many leaders tell us their real worry isn’t whether their systems are in place. It’s whether something they don’t know about is sitting somewhere in the school. That’s a reasonable thing to worry about, and it’s also exactly the thing an honest test will find.

In this guide we’ll explain how safeguarding is graded, what inspectors actually look at, what not met looks like in practice, and how to test your own safeguarding properly rather than checking your paperwork.

How Is Safeguarding Graded by Ofsted?

Safeguarding is reported as met or not met. It isn’t graded on the five point scale that applies to the other evaluation areas.

That design is deliberate. Safeguarding isn’t a thing a school can be partly good at. Either the arrangements protect children or they don’t, and a grade of strong standard would imply a spectrum that doesn’t exist where a child’s safety is concerned.

It also means the judgement carries differently. A needs attention grade in another area is information about where to improve. A not met safeguarding judgement is a statement that children may not be adequately protected, and it needs a response measured in days rather than terms.

What Do Ofsted Inspectors Look at for Safeguarding?

Culture more than paperwork, though the paperwork has to be right too.

In practice inspectors will look at whether the school identifies children who may need help or protection, whether concerns are acted on quickly and appropriately, whether records tell a coherent story, and whether staff know what to do and believe something will happen if they do it.

They’ll look at your single central record and your safer recruitment practice. They’ll look at how low level concerns about adults are recorded and whether anyone reviews them for patterns. They’ll look at how the school works with children’s social care and other agencies.

And they’ll talk to people a long way from the designated safeguarding lead. A teaching assistant, a member of the site team, a lunchtime supervisor. What those staff say about how to raise a concern tells inspectors more than any policy does.

What Does Not Met Look Like in Practice?

Rarely a school that doesn’t care. Usually a school where something specific has drifted.

From our experience the common causes are: a designated safeguarding lead with the title but no protected time to do the work; records that log concerns without anyone analysing what they add up to; a low level concerns process that exists on paper with an empty log; staff who could name the DSL but wouldn’t feel able to raise something about a colleague; or a single central record with gaps in it.

Each of those is fixable and each of them is invisible from inside if nobody looks. That’s why an internal check tends to confirm what you already believe, and an external one tends to find the thing you’d stopped seeing.

The other version of not met is a specific case handled badly, sometimes months earlier. That’s harder to prevent by system alone, which is why the culture question matters more than the folder.

How Should We Test Our Own Safeguarding?

Ask questions rather than reading documents, and start with the people least likely to be asked.

Four questions get you a long way. If you were worried about a child, what would you do? If you were worried about an adult, what would you do? Has anything ever been raised that you felt wasn’t dealt with? And do you think something would happen if you raised something tomorrow?

Ask those of a teaching assistant, a cleaner, a therapist, someone who joined two months ago and someone who’s been there fifteen years. The pattern in the answers is your safeguarding culture.

Then test a case. Take one child with an open concern and trace it end to end. When was it raised, what happened, who decided, what was recorded, what was the outcome, and would you be comfortable explaining that sequence to an inspector or to a serious case review?

A Safeguarding Audit or a Section 175 and 157 audit does this systematically and independently, which matters because the gap is usually where confidence has gone unexamined.

What About Independent Schools and Alternative Provision?

The principles are the same and the framework around them differs.

Registered independent schools are measured against the Independent School Standards, where safeguarding duties sit with the proprietor. That means a proprietor can’t discharge the duty by appointing a good designated safeguarding lead. They have to know it’s working and be able to evidence how they know.

In alternative provision and specialist settings, the safeguarding profile is different again. Pupils are frequently among the most vulnerable in the system, contextual safeguarding and exploitation risk feature heavily, and information sharing with referring schools and placing authorities is part of daily practice rather than an occasional task.

Where the proprietor is also the headteacher, name an external person a member of staff could go to with a concern about you, and put them in the policy. That single arrangement closes the most obvious gap in an owner led structure.

From Our Experience

The finding we make most often isn’t a case handled badly. It’s safeguarding being administered rather than led.

Records are kept, referrals are made, training is logged, and nobody is looking across the whole picture asking what it adds up to. A school in that position can pass every paperwork check and still not be seeing the child whose pattern only shows when you read six entries together.

Many leaders tell us the moment it became clear was watching a teaching assistant hesitate when asked how they’d raise a concern about a colleague. That hesitation is data, and it’s available to any leader willing to ask.

We also see designated safeguarding leads carrying the role alongside a full teaching timetable and two other responsibilities. They’re usually excellent people doing an impossible job, and protecting their time is the single most effective safeguarding investment a school can make.

A Common Misconception

“Our safeguarding is fine because our records and policies are in order.”

Records and policies are necessary and they’re the easiest part. A school can have an immaculate folder and a culture where a member of staff wouldn’t raise a concern about a senior colleague.

Inspectors know this, which is why they talk to people rather than reading files. So does anyone who has looked at safeguarding seriously.

The question that actually matters is whether a child in your school who needed help would get it, quickly, from whichever adult they happened to tell. That isn’t answered by a policy. It’s answered by whether the adults around that child know what to do and believe it’s worth doing.

Questions for Leaders

• Does our designated safeguarding lead have protected time, or only the title?
• When did anyone last analyse our records for patterns rather than completeness?
• Is our low level concerns log empty, and if so, why?
• Would a teaching assistant tell us honestly what they’d do about a concern involving an adult?
• If a proprietor is also the headteacher, who could a member of staff go to about them?

Our Perspective

The binary is uncomfortable and it’s the right design. Safeguarding isn’t an area where partial credit means anything to the child involved.

What we’d encourage leaders to take from it is not anxiety but precision. Met isn’t a compliment and not met isn’t a character judgement. Both are statements about whether the arrangements around children are working on an ordinary Tuesday, and that’s a question you can test yourself at any point without waiting to be asked.

The schools with the strongest safeguarding we see aren’t the ones with the best documentation. They’re the ones where somebody asks uncomfortable questions regularly, listens properly to the answers, and acts on what they hear. That’s what keeps children safe, and the judgement follows from it rather than the other way round.