Safer Recruitment Checks When Appointing an Interim School Leader

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and designated safeguarding leads

Interim appointments are where safer recruitment gaps most often appear, and it isn’t because anyone is careless. It’s because the appointment happens quickly, the person comes through a provider, and everyone reasonably assumes somebody else has done the checks.

Many proprietors tell us they discovered the gap during an audit or an inspection rather than at the time. The interim was entirely suitable, nothing had gone wrong, and the school still had a finding to explain because there was no evidence on file.

It’s an entirely avoidable position, and this guide sets out what should be completed before an interim starts and what you need to hold yourself.

Why do interim appointments carry particular risk?

Four reasons, and they compound.

Speed. An interim is often appointed in days rather than weeks, and pressure creates shortcuts.

A third party is usually involved. Where a provider makes the introduction, the duty to be satisfied still sits with the school, and it’s easy for both parties to assume the other has it.

The role is senior. An interim headteacher has unsupervised access to children and to every record in the building. Seniority is a reason for more rigour, not less, and yet it often produces less because nobody wants to ask a senior person for paperwork.

It feels temporary. There’s an unspoken sense that a short placement is somehow different. It isn’t. A child’s safety doesn’t vary with the length of an adult’s contract.

What must be completed before they start?

The same as for any appointment to a role with unsupervised access to children.

• Enhanced DBS with barred list check. Obtained by you, or properly verified, with the certificate seen and the date recorded.
• Prohibition from teaching check, and where you’re an independent school, the prohibition from management check as well.
• Identity verification, seen in person or through an accepted digital route.
• Right to work in the UK.
• Qualifications verified where any are claimed or required for the role.
• References, taken up directly by you, covering the most recent employment and asking about suitability to work with children.
• Overseas checks where the person has lived or worked abroad.
• A check on any relevant employment history gaps, which for interim leaders needs care because gaps between placements are normal and should be explored rather than assumed to be sinister.

Alongside those, complete a safeguarding induction on day one and record that it happened. Vetting and induction are different things and both are needed.

What belongs on your single central record?

The interim, with a complete set of entries, from day one.

This is the gap we find most often. A school with an otherwise well maintained single central record has no entry for the person leading it, because everyone treated them as somehow outside the system.

Where the interim is engaged through a provider, you’re relying on the provider’s checks for some entries. That’s acceptable, and it needs to be recorded as such: what the provider confirmed, when, and what evidence you saw. A written confirmation from the provider is evidence. A verbal assurance in a phone call isn’t.

Include everyone else too. Any specialist consultant, associate or additional interim brought in alongside them goes on the record on the same basis.

What should you ask a provider before you commission?

Six questions, and the answers tell you a great deal about how they operate.

Which checks do you hold for this person, and when were they completed? Will you provide written confirmation of each? Have you seen the DBS certificate itself, and can you tell me the issue date? Have you taken references directly from the most recent employer? What remains for us to complete? And what happens if something comes up in a check after the placement starts?

A good provider will answer all six without hesitation and will send you a written summary. If any answer is vague, that’s information.

What you should not accept is being told that vetting is handled and left at that. Your safer recruitment duty doesn’t transfer because someone else made the introduction.

What about very short placements?

The checks don’t reduce, but the practical question of who holds them shifts.

For a leader coming in for a fortnight, obtaining a fresh DBS yourself isn’t realistic within the timescale. That’s exactly the situation where a provider holding current, verifiable checks is genuinely valuable, and where written confirmation from them matters most.

What you should not do is allow unsupervised access to children on the basis of an assumption. Where checks aren’t yet complete, either delay the start or put a supervision arrangement in place and record it. Both are legitimate. Proceeding and hoping isn’t.

From our experience

The failure is almost never a person who shouldn’t have been appointed. It’s the absence of evidence that they should, which is what a safeguarding audit tends to surface.

We often find a suitable, well qualified interim with no entry on the single central record, no recorded induction and references that were taken by the provider rather than by the school. Everything was fine and none of it could be evidenced, which for an inspection purpose amounts to the same thing as nothing having been done.

Many proprietors tell us they’d assumed a provider’s assurance was sufficient. It’s an understandable assumption and it doesn’t hold. Schools that get this right ask for written confirmation as a matter of routine and file it with the appointment.

The other pattern worth naming is references. An interim’s history is a series of placements rather than a run of employers, and schools sometimes accept an open testimonial rather than contacting the most recent setting directly. That’s a shortcut that shows up later.

A common misconception

“They came through a reputable provider, so the checks are covered.”

A good provider genuinely does hold checks and genuinely does make this faster. What they can’t do is discharge your duty to be satisfied that the person leading your school is safe to do so.

The practical test is simple. If an inspector asked you tomorrow to evidence the checks on the person currently running your school, could you produce them from your own records within ten minutes? If the answer involves phoning the provider, you don’t yet have what you need.

The children in your school are entitled to the same standard of assurance about an interim leader as about anyone else. That’s the whole point of the system.

Questions for boards and designated safeguarding leads

• Is our interim on the single central record with a complete set of entries?
• Do we hold written confirmation from the provider of every check they carried out?
• Did we take up references ourselves, from the most recent placement?
• Is the safeguarding induction recorded, with a date?
• Could we evidence all of this within ten minutes if asked?

Our perspective

Safer recruitment for interim leaders isn’t different from safer recruitment for anyone else. It just happens faster and with more people involved, which is why it needs a deliberate process rather than good intentions.

Ask the provider the six questions. Get the answers in writing. Take your own references. Put the interim on the record on day one and record the induction.

An hour of administration before the start date protects the children in your school and protects you, and it means the appointment you made in a hurry is one you can stand behind a year later.