When Safeguarding Concerns Involve a Senior Leader

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and trustees

This is the situation proprietors most dread and are least prepared for. An allegation is made, and it concerns the headteacher or another senior leader.

Every instinct pulls the wrong way. You want to speak to the person first, because you know them and it’s probably a misunderstanding. You want to look into it yourself before troubling anyone external. You want to keep it contained until you know more.

It’s entirely understandable, and each of those instincts makes the situation worse. Many proprietors tell us the first twenty four hours were the part they’d handle differently, and the good news is that the correct actions are clear and there aren’t many of them.

What is the first thing to do?

Contact your local authority designated officer.

Where an allegation is made that a person working with children has harmed a child, may have committed a criminal offence against a child, has behaved towards a child in a way that indicates they may pose a risk, or behaves in a way that indicates they may not be suitable to work with children, the LADO is consulted. That’s the process, and it applies to a headteacher exactly as it applies to anyone else.

The one thing that changes when the allegation concerns a senior leader is who makes the referral. Normally the headteacher would. Where the headteacher is the subject, the proprietor or chair of the board does it. If you’re an independent school and the proprietor is the subject, take external advice immediately about who reports.

Do this the same day. Not after you’ve spoken to the person, and not after you’ve established whether it’s likely to be true.

Do not investigate first

This is the most important thing in this guide and the hardest to follow.

Speaking to the person concerned before you’ve taken LADO advice can contaminate an investigation, put a child at risk, and expose you to a fair process challenge later. So can asking staff what they know, or looking through records to satisfy yourself.

The LADO’s role is precisely to advise on what happens next, including whether a police or social care investigation is needed and what the school should and shouldn’t do in the meantime. Take that advice and follow it.

Where the school does end up conducting an investigation, take advice on who conducts it. Someone who reports to the person concerned cannot do it, and in a small setting there’s frequently nobody internally who’s genuinely independent. An independent investigation commissioned externally protects the process, protects the individual and protects the school.

What are the immediate practical steps?

Alongside the referral, five things need attention.

Make the child safe. Whatever else happens, the immediate safety of the child concerned comes first. The LADO will advise, and you should also consider whether other children may be affected.

Consider suspension, on advice. Suspension is a neutral act, not a sanction, and it’s a decision to be taken with advice rather than reflexively. Sometimes an alternative arrangement is appropriate. Take employment advice as well as safeguarding advice.

Handle access. Systems, safeguarding records, email and building access need considering, calmly and in line with your policy and the advice you’ve received.

Name who leads the school. In writing, on day one, with delegated authority in figures. This cannot wait for the investigation.

Check who holds safeguarding. If the person concerned was the designated safeguarding lead, name a replacement immediately and make sure they have current DSL training and know they now hold it.

Leadership cover during an investigation

Investigations take longer than anyone expects. Plan for a term rather than a fortnight.

Internal cover is often the wrong answer here, more so than in any other kind of absence. A deputy who has worked closely with the person concerned may be a witness. They’ll have a view. Colleagues will have the opposite view. And whichever way the outcome goes, that person has to work in the building afterwards.

An interim leader from outside carries none of that. They’ve never worked alongside the person concerned and they’ve formed no view about what happened. Whichever way the process concludes, it changes nothing for them, and that protects the fairness of it as well as the school.

There’s a governance dimension too. Where an investigation may look at how the school has been run, having an independent leader in post is a much stronger position than having the subject’s closest colleague making decisions.

What can you tell staff?

Very little about the allegation, and take advice on the wording before you say anything.

What people need to know is operational: who’s leading the school, who holds safeguarding, and who to go to. What they must not be given is detail, because that’s unfair to the individual and it can damage the investigation.

What we’d caution against is silence. Staff will know something has happened within hours, and a vacuum fills with speculation that’s far more damaging to everyone than a short factual statement.

Placing authorities should hear from you rather than through a parent. You don’t need to give them detail. You do need to tell them the school is properly led.

From our experience

The proprietors who handle this well move fast on the process and slowly on everything else. LADO referral, advice taken, leadership named, safeguarding covered, short factual statement. Then nothing further until there’s something real to say.

The mistake we see most often is the well intentioned conversation. A proprietor who’s known the head for eight years phones them to check what’s happened, and in doing so compromises the process before it has started. It’s an entirely human response and it causes serious problems.

Many leaders tell us afterwards that they hadn’t realised the LADO was there to advise rather than to judge, and that the conversation was more supportive than they’d feared. Schools that come through this well pick up the phone early rather than treating it as an escalation.

A common misconception

“We should establish whether there’s anything in it before involving anyone external.”

It’s the most natural thought in the world and it’s the one that does the most damage.

Deciding whether an allegation has substance is not the school’s job at this stage, and attempting it compromises everything that follows. The LADO exists precisely to make that judgement with you, and involving them early protects the child, protects the person accused if the allegation turns out to be unfounded, and protects the school.

Every child in your school is entitled to a setting where concerns about adults go through a proper process regardless of how senior the adult is. That principle matters most at exactly the moment it’s hardest to apply.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Do we know how to contact our LADO, today, without looking it up?
• Does our safeguarding policy say what happens when the subject is the headteacher or the proprietor?
• Who would lead this school tomorrow, and is it written down?
• Who holds safeguarding if the person concerned held it?
• Do we have access to genuinely independent investigation capacity?

Our perspective

This is the hardest thing a board will deal with, and it’s the situation where following the process matters most and feels most uncomfortable.

Refer early, take advice before acting, don’t investigate first, get independent leadership into the school, and keep a written record throughout. Those five things protect the child, the individual and the school at the same time, which is why the process is built the way it is.

What we’d say to any proprietor facing this is that the discomfort of doing it properly is far smaller than the cost of not. And the children in your school are relying on the adults above them to do the right thing on the day it’s hardest.

If you’re dealing with something like this now, a safeguarding support conversation alongside your LADO advice is worth having early rather than once decisions have already been made.