Catch up with the latest in safeguarding for schools: best practice, thought leadership, and all the latest insights within single central record management.

Sign In Central Record Blog

In its new 5-year strategy, Ofsted takes account of the educational context shaped by the pandemic and proposes efforts to ramp up inspections and focus on early years learning. In this blog, we look at the ramifications of these strategic priorities and how safeguarding checks can be incorporated under the same. 

The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted, for short) is the watchdog responsible for inspecting an array of educational institutions in the UK. Recently, the body unveiled its strategic vision and key areas of focus for the duration of 2022-27. In the 5-year-vision, the watchdog lays emphasis on ramping up the safeguarding measures like inspections and standard monitoring, designing an educational setting that addresses learning lags, and better recruitment practices for the workforce. 

Ramping up inspections and monitoring of standards

As a watchdog body, Ofsted inspects schools and academies, some independent schools, and other educational institutions, including special schools, pupil referral units and sixth form colleges on aspects of compliance, pupil safeguarding and educational quality. The body also inspects childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and initial teacher training.

In the new plan, Ofsted shares that the inspections will be ramped up to “allow more time for professional dialogue and evidence-gathering.” The focus is on making sure that the inspections yield useful outcomes. 

To that end, the inspections are expected to become more holistic: this means that inspections will examine a number of parameters beyond the obvious safeguarding benchmarks. This includes an assessment of how the skills gap is getting plugged, how well school leadership is engaging with other stakeholders and the robustness of the curriculum (as an extension to the inspection done under the education inspection framework - called EIF for short). In fact, the frameworks like the EIF will themselves be evaluated on their performance. 

Earlier, Ofsted had announced the £24 million spending review boost will be allocated towards inspection of all schools by 2025. Chief inspector Amanda Spielman was quoted as saying, “Schools and colleges have worked tirelessly to teach and support children and learners, at a time when their education has been seriously disrupted. Children only get one chance at school. Everyone working in education must do everything they can to give this generation the best possible chance to fulfil its potential. Ofsted will play its part – by giving parents and learners up-to-date information, and by helping schools and colleges shape their plans.”

By June 2025, all schools will be inspected.

This includes private schools and outstanding schools that were previously excluded. 

Interventions will take place if schools are found to have poor standards. A timeline of 9 to 12 months will be provided for the implementation of suggested changes. 

While thousands of schools are now controlled by MATs, Ofsted maintains that “the laws that govern how we inspect and regulate have not changed” even though a plethora of schools are now controlled by Multi-academy trusts (MATs). Ofsted has emphasised on Department for Education’s (DfE) regulatory review. So if you are looking for a software solution to help you ensure full compliance with DfE legislation, SCR Tracker can guide you through which checks are required for different types of employees, and when they need to be carried out, so you can be sure that you're compliant with current legislation.

Spotlight on Keeping Children Safe in Education

As we were mentioning in the previous point, Ofsted has indicated that it will work with the DfE to increase its powers to act when children are being educated in illegal schools. 

In the past year or so since the pandemic and lockdowns, newer risks and incidents have come to light. Inspections in the coming time will cover these bases as well. This means that Ofsted inspectors will look at the policies schools have for incidents and reports of sexual violence and sexual harassment, peer-on-peer abuse, among other sensitive incidents in the wake of the Everyone’s Invited scandal.

The inspectorate also recommends the inspection of local safeguarding partnerships under a new joint targeted area inspection programme.

Bolstering practices through data and rigorous research

As the other nuts and bolts are set up, Ofsted seeks to also “improve sharing of safeguarding information and data-sharing”. Ofsted plans to collaborate with other organisations in this field to broaden the data and insights. This research will then also be made accessible for everyone. 

The hope is that these insights will improve practice as they are used by schools, decision-makers and inspectors.

Schools and MATs will find the use of a tool to help with insight capturing, analytics dashboards, and other such features, handy. Headteachers, Safeguarding Governors and other colleagues can make use of such a system for daily updates and notifications. 

Ofsted has, time and again, expressed concerns about the impact of the pandemic on the quality of early years’ learning. This strategy of Ofsted creates actionable agenda for plugging this gap. 

First, it seeks to enhance high-quality teaching, for which it will “develop specialist training on early years education”. The pandemic-driven workforce crunch has been acknowledged, and concerns about the dwindling number of childcare providers have been highlighted as well. This also jeopardised their overall wellbeing in addition to their academic progress as vulnerable children, at risk of harm or neglect, disappeared from teachers’ line of sight.

Ofsted also promises to improve the quality of early years providers through the use and implementation of research and insight towards the support of young children’s physical, social and wider development.

Ofsted also hints at efforts to strengthen the workforce retention strategy. No organization has ever liked the idea of a high employee turnover: it adds to costs, hassles, and friction in workflows. Ofsted wants to look at the recruitment and retention approach and make it more proactive and flexible. The body is acknowledging the need to “develop specialist knowledge in growing areas of work” such as MATs.

In order to retain highly professional, credible people on staff, the new workforce strategy will focus on taking the average length of service for inspectors to at least 3-4 years. At the same time, the watchdog will work to improve the diversity of staff across all grades.

This is another aspect where efficient and easy statutory tracking of safer recruitment checks can be done through a Single Central Record tool. SCR Tracker provides a system to walk you through each pre-employment check, to see compliance by filling all sections complete and uploading evidence documentation on each staff profile.

Keeping an accurate Single Central Record is imperative to your promise of keeping children safe in education. With SCR Tracker, you can always be inspection-ready. 

Gearing up for change: Ofsted’s new 5-year strategy

scr_tracker_walk.mp4 (1080p)

On Friday 27th May, we completed a 15k circular route of the Jurassic Coast starting and finishing at Kimmeridge Bay, in association with 'National Walking Month'.

It was a challenging but great day and we were incredibly lucky with the weather! Overall we managed to achieve 110% of the target, raising a fantastic £1,105 for Save the Children UK. 

Save the Children, which currently operates in 117 countries and provides much-needed care to children all over the world, including urgent aid for children and their families in Ukraine. Right now, their teams are working hard to reach families in these devastating circumstances and all fundraising will help them to scale up their response in Ukraine to: 

provide cash and vouchers to help families pay for food, rent and medicines

offer mental health and psychological support to children whose lives have been torn apart 

support children’s learning through high-quality, inclusive education

provide warm clothes and blankets as temperatures plunge below freezing.

As well as supporting their local partners in Ukraine to:

provide essential food, blankets, and hygiene items for women and babies

help families on the move to stay safe – one partner has already helped 1072 people.

provide psychological first aid for schools and support remote learning

help more than 120 people access drinking water.

Save the Children have been working with staff to prepare resources in neighbouring countries such as Romania, Poland and Lithuania to help address the growing regional refugee crisis as more Ukrainian families flee. In Romania, they've already supported refugees at five reception centres and at nine border crossing points. So far, they've helped 15,176 people fleeing from Ukraine, of which 8,325 are children and 6,851 are adults. They have provided essential items like food, vouchers, nappies, hygiene products, blankets, socks and warm clothing. They also provide  phone cards to families and children that have fled the conflict, as well as  toys and setting up safe spaces where children can play, learn and cope with grief and loss.

Save the Children are also monitoring the needs of unaccompanied children and is in contact with the Romanian child protection system to help keep children safe from trafficking and providing advice and information (about the asylum process, means of travel and services like hospitals) as well as emotional support and translation services so all families can access the information they need to decide their next steps. 

They couldn’t do this vital lifesaving work without the fantastic fundraising support they receive. We are absolutely delighted to have achieved this amount for such a great cause and we are so extremely grateful to all of our supporters and everyone that has very kindly donated!

Sign In Central Record's 15k Team Charity Hike

The average adult spends approximately 30-40 hours of their week in the workplace, or working for their employer and whilst this is already a considerable amount of time spent per week, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about increased staff pressures and responsibilities, a range of social and emotional issues, and has resulted in heightened recruitment and retention issues, particularly for the education sector.

The pandemic has significantly impacted the way people have had to adapt and change including working from home arrangements, returning back and forth to their organisational settings, and supporting learners with additional and heightened support needs. According to MIND Charity “Every year, one in four of us will experience a mental health problem but hundreds of thousands of people are still struggling.” 

Mental Health First Aid England report that “mental ill-health is responsible for 72 million working days lost and costs £34.9 billion each year.”

When we consider the term ‘well-being’, this can include our physical, mental, emotional, and social health. Mental well-being describes how an individual is feeling at the time and how well they can cope with daily life, which can fluctuate from moment to moment, day to day, or month to month. 

The World Health Organisation states that “Mental health is a state of well-being in which every individual realises their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and are able to contribute to their community.” 

Feeling relatively confident in yourself and having positive self-esteem

Feeling and expressing a range of emotions

Building and maintaining good relationships with others

Feeling engaged with the world around you

Adapting and managing in times of change and uncertainty

The charter was published in November 2021 by the Department for Education. You can download a copy here.

“This charter sets out commitments from this department, from Ofsted and employers working in education on actions to protect and promote the well-being of education staff. As signatories, we are accountable for those commitments. Everyone working in education has an important role to play in supporting their well-being and that of their colleagues. I encourage all schools and colleges to put well-being at the centre of everything you do and sign up to the charter.” Nadhim Zahawi Secretary of State for Education November 2021

Work-related stress can be a significant factor that can impact a staff member’s well-being. The Health and Safety Executive has reported that the 6 main causes of work-related stress are:

Staff are not able to cope with the demands of their job

Staff are unable to control the way they do their work

Staff do not receive enough information and support

Staff are having trouble with relationships at work or are being bullied

Staff do not fully understand their role and responsibilities

Staff are not engaged when a business is undergoing change

For more information and tool kits on how to manage work-related stress please click here:

The Education Hub also provides some excellent guidance around building a culture of psychological safety, for more info click here.

If you are feeling signs of stress within your workplace, it is important you tell someone. If you talk to a manager at the earliest opportunity, it will allow them to intervene and hopefully stop the situation from escalating.

Other staff issues that can affect well-being and mental health

Organisations, leaders and managers should always try to adopt a holistic approach to well-being, based on the physical and psychological health risks and needs of the workforce. This can include offering support to those who may experience health challenges at various stages of life, such as pregnancy loss, chronic health conditions, caring responsibilities, and menopause.

The NHS states that menopause is when your periods stop due to lower hormone levels. This usually happens between the ages of 45 and 55. The condition can cause symptoms like anxiety, brain fog, hot flushes, and irregular periods. These symptoms can start ten years before periods stop and continue afterwards and can have a significant impact on a person’s life, including relationships and work.

Organisations that offer support for menopause:

Menopause Matters:    https://www.menopausematters.co.uk/ 

Menopause Cafe:         https://www.menopausecafe.net/ 

Queer Menopause:      https://www.queermenopause.com/resources 

A whole-school approach is required to ensure that all employees and learners are truly accepting and understanding of well-being and mental health issues and how building inner resilience and accessing early intervention is essential.

It is fundamental that we do not stigmatise or label mental health issues as we all experience the reality of having normal emotional reactions to new or difficult experiences. Schools and educational organisations should always recognise that some employees may commence their employment with pre-existing psychological issues or diagnoses, either declared or undeclared.

Provide a supportive and healthy workplace environment

Enrich the experiences of all employees through the promotion of a supportive culture of well-being and emotional resilience

Ensure that there is a clear process of reporting issues or concerns or seeking support for employees

Increase awareness and understanding of well-being, physical health, mental health, and common mental health issues

Be responsive to the early warning signs of mental ill-health with a preventative approach

Provide education, guidance, and support to employees working with those with well-being or mental health issues.

Be responsive to anyone affected directly and indirectly by mental ill-health.

Provide support to individuals experiencing well-being, physical, or mental ill-health issues and conditions.

It is important to note that confidentiality does not apply when a person becomes a danger to themselves, or others and staff should escalate any high-risk concerns immediately to the Designated Safeguarding Lead or Officer as per the organisation’s Safeguarding Reporting Procedure. It is always a safeguarding issue if a person discloses suicidal ideation. Mental health emergencies are serious. By speaking up, everyone should know that you are not wasting anyone’s time.

Mental health first aid style initiatives 

Mental health first aid style initiatives are fundamental to creating a safe and healthy workplace and are trained employees that can identify, understand, and support individuals who may be experiencing a mental health issue. They will listen, reassure, and respond, even in a crisis and even potentially prevent a crisis from occurring and are trained to recognise some of the warning signs of mental ill-health and help to empower people to access support for recovery or management of symptoms.

Organisations should recognise that Mental Health First Aiders/ Advocates or Champions require support given the nature of the role. These employees have volunteered to complete the training and to be available to support others as an addition to their primary job role, so it is essential that they have access to regular supervision, appropriate training, peer-to-peer support and be regularly checked in on by someone who oversees the initiative.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Conversations around well-being and mental health should always have a clear emphasis on enabling individuals to develop their knowledge, understanding, skills, language, and confidence to seek help for themselves and their colleagues.

Be open about your situation wherever possible and prioritise your own self-care and well-being. When we take responsibility for ourselves and build inner resilience and positive thinking it can help us find solutions. If we feel unable to do so on our own, then it is important to speak up and ask for support. 

Protect your physical and psychological health

Learning does not stop in the classroom. Children often attend after-school activities, referred to as out-of-school settings (OOSS), where they absorb new skills and knowledge. More specifically, OOSS are defined as organisations or individuals that act as providers of tuition, training, instruction, or similar activities in settings that aren’t formal schools or colleges or academies, but where parents or carers are not present to supervise.

These activities usually happen outside normal school hours. So, if you’re a parent sending your child for piano lessons over the weekends or on evenings or school holidays, that’s an example of an OOSS. It’s clear by the definition that OOSS are not a substitute for schools, but these settings and extra-curricular engagement can be incredibly helpful in your child’s holistic development. From social skills, initiative, leadership skills, time management, and exploration of interests, children learn a lot more than just the hard skills in such settings. 

OOSS can be both commercial, donation-based, or free, and can range from community youth centres and sports clubs to places of worship. These include learning centres built to supplement mainstream or home education, extracurricular skill classes like dance or sports clubs, instrumental or gymnastics training classes, centres for preparation of competitive examinations, uniformed youth organisations such as Scouts or Guides, or religious centres for faith-based learning, or faith groups or just a place of worship. 

Children often enjoy the time they spend in such settings because these activities allow them the space to explore their interests, get out of their comfort zone, get rich experiences, reinforce learning, and most importantly, help them build a social circle outside of their school. Many activities start with a hard skill in mind, for example, learning to play the piano, or learning gymnastics, but soft skills development constitutes a big part of these activities. Out-of-school activities follow the principle of learning by doing, called Experiential Learning. 

Angela Karanja, founder of Raising Remarkable Teenagers and an adolescent psychologist and parenting teenagers expert, points out the experiential advantage of after-school activities in developing crucial life skills in children by giving them a taste of the real world, “Schools are institutions with mainly routines and structure and young people can be caught up in the rote performance. Out of school activities allow for diverse engagement and brain and body activation, involvement in different perspectives, active and conscious thinking, evaluation and decision making. For example, if a young person wants to use the toilet at school, they know exactly where it is, the route and even how long it takes to get there, where the toilet paper is etc. Doing so at a different venue will require them to ask for directions, and travel a different route and distance from what they are used to. This simple activity in itself requires conscious thinking and it, therefore, expands their mind. They learn something new about their space, they practise asking for help and support, and it solidifies a renewed belief and confidence within them with respect to their flexibility and adaptability.”

For spaces that hold so much power for the future of children, it is imperative to keep children safe. Just like schools and academies, these OOSS venues should also be vetted for their safeguarding policies and provisions. 

Here are a few broad categories of safeguarding measures that can help ensure safety in after-school activities:-

Parents must check that the OOSS venues have fire safety and an evacuation plan. That goes for all buildings in the venue. The providers should also ensure that their employees have first aid training and that first aid kits are readily available and accessible in case of emergencies. They should also be equipped to act in such situations, like knowing where to call for medical emergencies, having a register of emergency contacts for the children attending the training or tuition.  If possible, providers can go a step further and maintain a directory of medical concerns or allergies that students attending their establishment have. It would also be a good idea to have a medical practitioner or volunteer in attendance or on-call for major events or crucial days, like a competitive event or a performance day when the venue is likely to host many people.

Most after-school activity venues will be unregulated, but that does not mean that your child should be endangered. Mostly, after-school activity venues are also fun and safe places for children. There are still guidelines that can help fortify the spaces further.   

Some district councils have certification programmes that help such venues and community associations establish credibility in their safeguarding policies and procedures. What exactly can these policies entail? 

Below we discuss the provisions and policy elements, which are not very unlike the ones implemented in schools.

First and foremost, the OOSS should have a safeguarding and child protection policy. This policy ordinarily contains procedures and guidelines for dealing with safeguarding incidents. This policy should also be part of the staff training modules so that everyone who interacts with children is fully equipped to take care of their safety. 

The policy or the training will also apprise the staff members of the issues related to children at risk of harm, and help them identify signs of abuse/neglect/extremism/bullying. There should also be clear procedures if concerns are raised about misconduct by a staff member or volunteer. 

Apart from laying down policies and procedures, it is very crucial to appoint someone to take care of the safeguarding elements. This is usually a trained person called a designated safeguarding lead (DSL), whose details are also shared with parents, carers or guardians, should there be safety concerns. 

If parents want to escalate any issue or report any provider or serious incident, they can approach the NSPCC at 0808 800 5000, a Local authority designated officer (LADO) or the police.

Drawing from the previous point, it is also important that all the staff and volunteers working at the OOSS undergo a pre-employment check, like the DBS check, identity verification and so on. Sometimes, volunteers come and go and organisations fail to check up on each one, but DBS checks can ensure the safety of everyone attending the space.  

Training on safety procedures should form a part of their induction or onboarding process. For more formal spaces, regular performance reviews, anonymous feedback boxes, etc can also help make it a safer space for children.

To emphasise one specific part of the safeguarding policy, governance measures should help to strengthen the safeguarding response for children in OOSS spaces. There should be a clear complaints procedure and an effective whistleblowing policy that protects everyone involved. 

Everything that has been promised in the safeguarding policy should be backed up with sufficient resources. If incidents occur, children should have a clear idea of how they can report the same to a superior or a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). Providers should ensure that a robust complaint and redressal mechanism is in place and communicated to everyone.

Finally, parents can always exercise their right to ask about these provisions: official first aiders, DSL, health and safety protocols, child-protection policy, complaints committee or procedure, etc. If the providers at the OOSS are not able to answer with conviction, it’s a sign they aren’t taking accountability for your child. We suggest parents use this list of questions before choosing any out-of-school setting for their children.

An important element of children’s safety is their psychological safety or their ability to be able to express themselves without the fear of judgement, humiliation or punishment. Adolescent psychologist and parenting teenagers expert Karanja shares what these internal factors look like in practice, “Internal factors include empowering confidence and competence and belief in young people. Encouraging them to ask questions about the things around them, encouraging them to listen to their intuition, empowering them with choices, extending empathy when they are learning at a different pace than others. Young people should be empowered to speak about their discomforts or things that don't feel right to them. They need to know they’ll be listened to and heard and believed.”

As mentioned in a previous blog, children need to feel comfortable to be able to report incidents and receive support, validation, and reassurance. 

Last, but not least, if your child is using the internet or digital devices in any form for their after-school exercises or activities, we need to ensure proper checks are in place for their safety. Firewall settings, child-lock, use of VPN, and discouraging use of public networks are some tangible measures. Beyond these, you should strive to keep an open channel of communication with children. If they come across anything unwanted or uncomfortable online, they should feel safe coming to you with their concern.

Children pick up some of the most crucial life skills in out-of-school settings, so we should make sure they are able to make mistakes, learn from them, and express themselves openly in these spaces. As well as a safeguarding toolkit, their mental health should also be cared for. 

We are delighted to have reached a huge milestone - we have just signed our 1000th school!

The team here at Sign In Central Record are having a mini celebration as we have just reached our 1000th school to subscribe to our software. We are also thrilled to have signed over 100 Trusts as well!

Over the past three years, our team has more than doubled with the introduction of a dedicated customer support team, partnerships with recognised safeguarding experts, and more recently the creation of a sales and marketing department.  During this time we have also been working hard to improve our software by adding new features, such as fully customisable templates and custom profile types, to our customisable reports and dashboard. Not to mention our most recent feature, which allows fully integrated DBS checks directly in the portal.

All of these improvements have significantly improved our customer satisfaction by ensuring the use of our software can reduce the amount of time spent on any safeguarding task and decrease the number of different applications needed to do the same job. Whether our users previously used Excel, an MIS, or another solution to capture their Single Central Record, we ensure they are up and running in no time. We want to take as much of the time-consuming manual checks and data entry away as much as possible and ensure it's a fully streamlined, efficient and enjoyable experience.

"The Sign In Central Record software is excellent and very easy to use, I would recommend it without hesitation! It's quick and easy to get set up too." Sally Vickers SCR Administrator, St Edmund's Catholic School

We always listen to our customers to find out what we can further develop or any additional features that will help to improve the user experience. All of the positive feedback from our customers has certainly helped us reach this milestone. A vast amount of business comes from referrals and word-of-mouth, so we couldn't have achieved this growth so quickly without our loyal advocates, especially throughout a 2-year pandemic. 

"Migrating the information over was very straightforward ... The support from Sign In Central Record has been invaluable. They are quick to respond to queries, giving sound and easy to follow advice, and are open to suggestions to enhance the system further." Jennifer Jarvis Primary Schools HR Officer, Wickersley Partnership Trust

We are hugely thankful to all of our fantastic customers - we hope they continue to enjoy our software and we can't wait to share all the exciting new plans coming up later this year!

If you are interested in finding out more information about our software, or you would like to book a system demonstration, please click here. 

Sign In Central Record signs its 1000th school

When school management & policymakers talk about safeguarding in schools, one aspect that could use more attention and resources is the safety of children in schools who are known to be more vulnerable due to their identities. This goes for most marginalised identities, but in this article, we discuss one identity that isn’t always as visibly different: our LGBTQ+ children. 

For students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, or questioning (LGBTQ+), the school and university can be a crucial place and period. It’s a time when they are exploring their identity and understanding it themselves. But they’re also soft targets for bullying, harassment, discrimination, assault and other negative treatments. 

UK Charity Stonewall reports that two in five LGBT students (42%) have hidden their identity at university for fear of discrimination. 7% of trans students have been physically attacked by another student or member of university staff in the last year. A plethora of worrying accounts have been recorded, of students facing discrimination and a lack of inclusion because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Such kinds of bullying are unfortunately still a daily reality for many LGBTQ children and schools are often the first place they experience these things. With the online modes being so rampantly used, the manner and mode of such bullying changes — children can even be targeted anonymously — and it can get increasingly complex, targeted, or brutal.

Incidents and experiences like these take a mental and emotional toll. They can also be disruptive to a child’s learning and safety. This is why LGBTQ+ safety should form a core part of our safeguarding policies.  

Over the past few years, some progress has been made: 64% of LGBTQ+ students mentioned they are comfortable being open about their identity at school. 82% shared that they are confident about being more open about their sexual orientation or gender at university. As for the impact of their gender identity and expression on the educational experience, 9 out of 10 LGBTQ+ students reported having a good or neutral experience so far. Three-fourths of them attributed this comfort to acceptance by their peers. 

Today, educational institutions have a far greater awareness of the issues and are keen to create a safe environment where LGBTQ+ children can thrive. For this, there needs to be a safe space policy, in addition to school facilities, sensitisation drives, anti-discrimination and anti-bullying campaigns shared spaces and other initiatives. 

The design of all these initiatives should be made with the involvement of LGBTQ+ children. It’s called a lived experience approach and helps to ensure that our policies really benefit the ones they are intended to help. The principle is simple: Who can tell us better about the issues faced by LGBTQ+ youth than LGBTQ+ youth themselves? With that in mind, let’s look at how we can make our schools better places for LGBTQ+ children. 

We can start small. Share this response template with all members of the staff if they are made aware of any instance of bullying or harassment against LGBTQ+ children. This includes reports about comments that may not have been directed at one person in particular, but that can negatively impact children who identify as LGBTQ+. 

Understand the situation, try to deal with it without much panic. It’s best if such incidents are resolved privately.

Get all the facts together. Who all were involved as spectators and who was targeted by whom? Find out exactly what happened and try to verify from different sources. 

Make space for listening. Calmly dedicate some time, give attention to everyone. Remember, children might be feeling particularly vulnerable right now. 

Then respond by repeating the facts of the incident, specifying the issues with the behaviour, and affirming that it was harmful or hurtful. 

Act according to the school/classroom policy: what does the policy suggest as a lesson? What are the consequences? Use this as a teachable moment for others too. Bring home the value of kindness. 

Beyond the immediate response and a guiding policy, there should also be tangible sources of help for LGBTQ+ children in the school. Mental health counsellors at school can be one of the most important support resources. In the past year, nearly half of LGBTQ youth wanted to seek mental health counselling. They also look for spaces and practices that affirm their identity. These positive affirmations are very important, especially for children in the formative stages of their lives. Access to such resources should also be easy and confidentiality should be assured. 

The language we use also influences the outlook towards different identities. Time and again, LGBTQ+ students have shared their distress at the demeaning remarks made at their expense, like the word “gay” being used in a negative or derogatory manner. 

So much of the teaching is also done in archaic ways. Using a gendered language, not using inclusive pronouns while referring to children, or upholding gender binary in the educational contexts also deprives marginalised identities to be included in a classroom as equal to their peers. So, language training should be imparted, but the training shouldn’t just be superficial or reactive. Instead, it should look at the nuances of the situational contexts where LGBTQ children might feel endangered or unsafe and proactively work to change old ways of communication.

Simple things can make a huge cultural shift: calling young people by the name and pronouns they want to use and ensuring your school policies are trans-inclusive.

Collaborate with External Training Providers & Nonprofits

To that effect, it might be a good option to consider collaboration with external entities who specialise in imparting such kinds of training. Jake Kelly, Joint Head of Youth Service, Gendered Intelligence, a UK charity, shares, “At Gendered Intelligence we run a mentoring service for trans, non-binary and gender exploring young people in their educational setting — from primary through to higher education. The aim of this work is to support young people to attend, achieve and enjoy.” 

He adds, “the GI mentoring service is able to offer a holistic look at the trans, non-binary or gender exploring young person's needs within an educational setting. As part of this service, we also offer support and guidance to the educational establishment around supporting their students. Our approach is to work with the young person and the key professionals in their place of education, thus taking the onus away from the child/young person to have to explain and educate the adults around them as to what they need to be able to thrive in their education.”

What else can school leaders and management do to ensure safeguarding for trans and non-binary children and young people? Kelly adds, “Management and school leaders are best placed to make decisions about trans and non-binary student access to suitable changing and toilet facilities. We would suggest considering creating one uniform policy with non-gendered items, rather than putting clothes in boys’ and girls’ columns. This allows students to choose the clothing which is most comfortable for them as an individual.”

This extends to the times when a safeguarding or child protection issue is being considered that involves a trans or non-binary student. Be thoughtful about the details of a young person’s identity/name/pronoun/transition/physicality and whether or not these are to be disclosed. 

The Trevor Project’s Coming Out: A Handbook for LGBTQ Young People covers a wide range of topics to support LGBTQ young people in exploring what coming out safely can mean for them.

The Trevor Project’s Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Youth covers a wide range of topics and best practices on how to support transgender and nonbinary people, including the basics of gender, forms of address that show respect, common mistakes and what to do if you’ve made one.

The Trevor Project’s How To Support Bisexual Youth: Ways to Care for Young People Who Are Attracted to More Than One Gender covers best practices for supporting bisexual youth, including the basics of multisexual identities, sexual vs. romantic orientations, preventing bisexual erasure and biphobia, navigating gender and bisexuality, exploring different relationship types, and self-care tips.

Stonewall’s LGBTQ+ inclusive books for children and young people. A hand-selected list of LGBTQ-inclusive books for children and young people to enjoy. 