New requirements on schools and key policy changes in 2016/17

 -FOR ALL SCHOOLS- 

Changes to statutory safeguarding guidance

The Department for Education (DfE) has published an updated version of its statutory safeguarding guidance for schools, Keeping Children Safe in Education, which takes effect from 5 September 2016.

The main changes are related to:

• The guidance that all staff working in schools are required to follow
• The role of the designated safeguarding lead
• Required safeguarding training for staff
• Safer recruitment
• The reporting of concerns
• Online safety
• Teaching pupils about safeguarding
• Specific safeguarding issues.

New school website requirements

The requirements for the information that schools must publish on their websites has been updated to take effect from September 2016. This is under The School Information (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2016.

The regulations introduce new requirements to publish the following online:

• The school's complaints procedures
• The school's 16-18 results including details of progress, attainment, English and mathematics progress, retention and destinations

The regulations also require schools to include their most recent Key Stage (KS) 2 and (KS) 4 results as published in the school performance tables. Schools must also ensure there is information published for the previous and current academic year on the allocation and impact of the pupil premium grant.

New requirements regarding the school roll

All schools are now required (as of 1 September 2016) to inform their LA when a pupil is added to or removed from the admission register (also known as the roll). This is detailed in the consultation on improving information in identifying children missing education.

Schools will also be required to:

• Record details of the pupil’s residence, the name of the person with whom he/she will reside, the date from which he/she will reside there, and the name of the destination school;
• Inform their LA of the pupil's destination school and home address if the pupil is moving to a new school;
• Inform their LA within five days of registering a new pupil of his/her address and previous school.

Changes to information on the school census

The DfE’s guide to the school census in 2016/17 sets out some changes to the data that schools will have to submit. Data items that are required in the 2016/17 academic year, but were not required in previous years, include:

• Proficiency in English
• Country of birth
• Pupil nationality
• Unique property reference number

Schools will no longer, however, have to record data for the school location module or the in-care indicator for exclusions.

There have also been changes made to other data items included in the census. For a full list and the details of each item, see pages 10-12 in the DfE’s census guide.

-EARLY YEARS SETTINGS ONLY-

New paediatric first aid requirements for Early Years settings

From 1 September 2016 (subject to parliamentary approval) all newly qualified early years staff will be required to hold a paediatric first aid (PFA) or emergency PFA certificate in order to be included in the staff-to-children ratios in an early years setting. This is set out in the consultation response paediatric first aid requirements in the statutory framework for the early years foundation stage