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Introduction
Education practitioners are in a key position to recognise and respond to concerns of child sexual abuse; they are also the practitioners children are most likely to talk to when they are being or have been sexually abused. Staff in schools, colleges and other education and early years settings regularly observe children over time and can be the first to notice behavioural changes or signs of distress.
Education records can provide valuable insights into a child’s daily life, academic progress, social development and safeguarding history. Sharing timely and accurate information from and with education practitioners is essential for risk assessment, contextual understanding, and coordinated multi-agency safeguarding. However, because these records are intended to support the child’s safety and development, they often contain sensitive, contextual and sometimes subjective information. It’s important that the information shared as part of multi-agency safeguarding work is necessary to protect the child, accurate, and interpreted in context; professional judgement must be applied to ensure that information shared from records supports decision-making without breaching confidentiality or sharing irrelevant personal details.
Why sharing information on child sexual abuse is important for education professionals
Watch this short video by Victoria Morris, an experienced education professional and member of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, who explains why sharing information from across different agencies can help build a full picture of child sexual abuse.
How might information be shared from education settings?
In education and early years settings, information about a child’s welfare, safeguarding concerns or emerging risks is typically shared through the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) in England, or Designated Safeguarding Person (DSP) in Wales. The DSL/DSP acts as the central point for coordinating safeguarding information, ensuring that concerns observed by teachers, pastoral staff or other practitioners or volunteers in the setting are accurately recorded, assessed, and, where necessary, escalated to external organisations.
When contributing to a multi-agency assessment of a child, the DSL/DSP can provide relevant information from safeguarding and pastoral records, observations of the child’s behaviour and interactions, attendance and engagement patterns, and any interventions or support already in place. Information is shared on a need-to-know basis, focusing on what is necessary to protect the child, and should be contextualised so that practitioners receiving it understand the source, limitations and purpose of the information.
Safeguarding and pastoral records
Records should be kept of signs and indicators of concern, notes from conversations with children and their families, concerns raised by staff, logs of safeguarding incidents, and actions taken. This information is useful for identifying patterns of behaviour, early signs of abuse, or safeguarding risks.
These records can also capture insights from meetings with parents, carers or external organisations, and details of risk assessments or safety measures put in place for the child.
In education and early years settings, safeguarding and pastoral records are typically maintained on secure digital or paper-based systems designed to support case management, documentation and, where appropriate, information sharing. Examples include:
- CPOMS (Child Protection Online Monitoring System). Widely used in UK schools to log safeguarding concerns, incidents and pastoral notes. It allows the DSL/DSP to track patterns, generate reports and share information securely with other practitioners.
- My Concern. Another safeguarding case management system which allows schools to record, monitor and escalate concerns about children’s welfare.
- Scholarpack or SIMS (School Information Management System). Primarily student information systems, but often used to record pastoral notes, attendance patterns and behaviour logs that may have safeguarding relevance.
- Paper-based logs: Some smaller settings or historical records may still be maintained in locked, confidential paper files, often held by the DSL/DSP.
- Local bespoke systems: Certain local authorities or academy trusts may use their own secure electronic systems for safeguarding and welfare case management, often integrated with wider education or social care records.
These systems are designed to be accessible only to authorised staff, with audit trails, secure logins, and controlled access levels to protect sensitive information. When information is extracted from these systems for multi-agency work, only relevant details should be shared, and the context of the recording should be clear to those interpreting the data
Attendance and exclusion data
Records showing patterns of non-attendance, unexplained absences or exclusions (fixed-term or permanent).
Find out more about attendance and exclusion data
Parent and carer engagement records
Notes from parent meetings, correspondence, and reports of concerns or observations raised by parents. This information may help identify risk factors within the home environment or parental reluctance or avoidance to engage with services.
Practitioners in early years settings, schools and colleges must share safeguarding information in accordance with the following legal frameworks:
- The Children Acts 1989 and 2004 establish a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, including a responsibility to share information where it is in the child’s best interests.
- Keeping Children Safe in Education in England, and Keeping Learners Safe in Wales, are statutory guidance requiring all staff to share safeguarding concerns with the DSL/DSP, who in turn must share information with relevant external organisations when necessary.
- Further statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children in England and Working Together to Safeguard People, Volume 5 in Wales, outline the obligation on schools and colleges to participate in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, including information sharing.
- The Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) permit the sharing of personal data without consent where it is necessary to protect a child from harm or to fulfil statutory safeguarding duties.
- The Education Act 2002 (Section 175), the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, the Non-Maintained Special Schools (England) Regulations 2015 and the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 require school governing bodies and proprietors to ensure their functions are carried out with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.
As noted above, the information shared must be necessary to protect the child, accurate, and interpreted in context.