Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to twenty MAT leaders from trusts of all shapes and sizes. From smaller 7 school MATs to those with 30+. Different geographies, different systems, different internal structures. And yet, every conversation drifted to the same uncomfortable theme:

MATs now carry Trust-level accountability for staff safeguarding, but the systems schools use haven’t evolved to support that responsibility.

At school level, spreadsheets, occasional audits and local processes just about hold together with a huge amount of time and energy invested into them.

At Trust level, they fall apart.

The leaders I spoke to weren’t listing twenty separate problems. They were describing one underlying issue:

The Safeguarding Assurance Gap - the growing distance between what MAT leaders are responsible for, and what their systems actually allow them to see.

Having been a Trust COO myself, I recognise that feeling immediately. The sense that you’re working incredibly hard, your schools are working incredibly hard, but the tools simply weren’t designed to give you the oversight you’re accountable for.

Below are the six themes that came up repeatedly, and more importantly, what they reveal about the future of Trust-wide safeguarding.

1. “We think our SCRs are compliant… but we can’t prove it.”

This was almost universal. Schools assured leaders their SCRs were correct, but no one had a real-time way to verify this across the Trust. Assurance relied on annual audits, self-reporting, or occasional spot checks.

The issue isn’t lack of effort.
It’s the absence of modern platforms built for MAT safeguarding assurance.

Under the updated Ofsted framework, safeguarding will come under much more intense scrutiny. It’s now a standalone judgment criteria (previously it was a sub-section of the leadership & management criteria) and you’ll be expected to produce audit trails to evidence the strength of your processes. As someone who has been a part of multiple Ofsted inspections, including one in which an Outstanding school had a major safeguarding issue and was downgraded, reviewing your systems and processes before your next Ofsted visit will be one of the best strategic decisions you can make.

MAT leaders are expected to demonstrate oversight with demonstrable evidence to back this up. The safeguarding assurance gap here is widening.

2. No one knew when the last review or audit had taken place.

“When was your last SCR review?” produced a huge range of answers.

Some had recent audits.
Some hadn’t been reviewed for over a year.
In one Trust, two schools hadn’t had a formal SCR review in eighteen months due to staff turnover.

Half of those I spoke to didn’t know when their last review or audit was. Bear in mind that it’s a requirement that governors review the SCR at least once per term (which from experience I know doesn’t happen consistently). This is exactly the same position I was in as a MAT COO - we had no oversight on when audits or reviews were taking place as this information (if even available), was buried in minutes in some Word document from the school governor meeting. It’s just not conducive to running a Trust effectively.

This is the safeguarding assurance gap once again. It’s a systemic problem: when audit or review information lives in emails, spreadsheets, or someone’s memory, it creates risks. A risk that someone has made a mistake or missed something. Scaled across a Trust, it’s a system problem and the more you grow (either in numbers of staff or schools), the bigger the risk grows.

3. It’s near impossible to standardise with Spreadsheets.

Every Trust leader raised this. Despite best efforts, every school had its own SCR format. Even when the Trust had issued a standard spreadsheet template, their schools had changed it. These Trusts now received spreadsheets with:

• different tabs
• different column structures
• different staff types or job titles
• different interpretations of the guidance
• hidden tabs with “helper notes”

Lots of data. Very little insight.

You can’t compare schools, spot patterns, or give meaningful assurance when your information is effectively bespoke to each site. And inconsistent formats create safeguarding risks of their own checks getting missed, requirements interpreted differently, and gaps go unnoticed.

You can’t raise safeguarding standards until the foundational standards are set in stone and are consistently followed. It has to be baked into the system.

4. Confusion around extended / out of school provision was widespread.

This was one of the most unsettling themes. Trusts were increasingly unsure whether external partners (wraparound providers, sports clubs, peripatetic music teachers, coaches), were being vetted appropriately.

One leader shared the example of a school working with a local football club. When asked for vetting evidence, the school couldn’t produce any and they didn’t have letters of assurance on file either. They weren’t even clear on whether there would always be a teacher present with pupils at these sessions. 

When we onboard new schools and Trusts, reconciling the vetting and record keeping data for external providers is the biggest challenge, as in most cases, there’s very little held on file. 

This is a consequence of the safeguarding perimeter expanding faster than the systems designed to manage it. Some tools handle full-time staff reasonably well. Extended provision? Contractors? Peripatetic staff? Not at all.

5. MIS and HR add-ons creating more frustration than confidence

Some Trusts attempted to standardise SCR processes by using MIS or HR modules. The common threads were:

• Frustrating interfaces with lots of clicking
• Slower data entry than spreadsheets - exacerbating workload
• Little or no automation - unclear improvements from making the change
• Limited reporting - the assurance gap still remains
• Not all data held in the system - schools often managing contractors elsewhere

School staff were frustrated by having to use a system that was more difficult than their spreadsheets, and Trust staff found that they didn’t gain the oversight and real-time assurance they were seeking. 

At best it leads to schools reverting back to spreadsheets. At worst they stick with it and it increases workload on school teams for the long term. In either instance it’s a bad outcome which can lead to tension between schools and the Trust. 

It’s completely right to look to centralise systems at a Trust level, I did a lot of this in my role and I know the uphill battle you can get into with schools who don’t want to change. It’s important to assess your options before committing to a direction.

MIS systems are primarily built for attendance and assessment.
HR systems are built for contracts and payroll.

Safeguarding doesn’t fit neatly into either. That’s why systems purpose built for safeguarding give you better outcomes. 

Bolt-ons feel like bolt-ons.

6. Safeguarding data is becoming siloed - and leaders can feel the blind spots growing.

Conversations inevitably broadened beyond SCRs to the wider safeguarding landscape:

• Where are low-level concerns recorded?
• Are patterns being spotted across schools?
• Who monitors extended provision vetting?
• How is training tracked?
• Where is policy acknowledgement stored?

The answer was usually: “In lots of places, and none of them talk to each other.”

This fragmentation creates genuine oversight blind spots. Leaders don’t know what they don’t know, the most uncomfortable place to be when responsible for safeguarding.

A deeper truth: Trust leaders feel accountable, but don’t have the tools they need

Across the conversations, one emotional thread kept surfacing: anxiety.

Not because leaders or schools were neglectful or are not working hard - far from it. These are dedicated people doing their best within systems that weren’t built for MAT-scale oversight.

But they all felt the weight of accountability but didn’t have the tools they needed to feel confident.

That’s the heart of this issue.

What does this mean for the future of Trust-wide safeguarding?

From my conversations with twenty Trust leaders, the difficulties of managing safeguarding as a central team is getting harder, and it’s come at a time when the risks have never been greater. While the Ofsted framework has changed, this is in response to the increased challenges of keeping children safe. In the last 3 years there’s been a 400% increase in-post teachers being barred from working with children. Almost 1 million adults are barred from working with children in the UK (1 in 34 working adults). It is shocking.

The insights from these leaders point to a deeper shift in how MATs are looking to approach safeguarding in the future. These are:

1. Safeguarding will move from periodic oversight to continuous assurance.

The old model of annual audits is ending. Trust leaders want real-time visibility on what’s happening across their schools.

2. Standardisation will be enforced by systems, not only policy.

If you want all of your schools to follow the same process, it has to be built into the tools they use every day. This doesn’t mean there’s no flexibility. It means there’s a baseline of standardisation.

If you rely on each school keeping their own spreadsheets, they’ll end up customising to such an extent it becomes difficult to quickly review it at Trust level.

3. The SCR is only one part of the picture.

Issues with staff safeguarding have risen by 400% in the past 3 years and this is just incidents that go to formal. Ensuring staff are robustly vetted before starting work is the foundation, but ongoing management and reporting of issues is of growing importance. 

MATs increasingly need integrated visibility across training, policy, conduct, staff behaviour, and extended workforce vetting.

4. Extended workforce / provision vetting is becoming a growing risk area.

Expect this to become an Ofsted talking point in the future as it already is informally.

5. Siloed data will be seen as a safeguarding risk in itself.

If information is scattered in different place, documents, or systems, leaders struggle with oversight. This means patterns get missed.

6. MATs will shift toward purpose-built safeguarding infrastructure.

This is already happening as Trusts seek out more comprehensive oversight and control of safeguarding across their estate. Spreadsheets, generic MIS features, and HR bolt-ons are not purpose built for safeguarding and the limitations are becoming more well known.

A final reflection: safeguarding infrastructure is essential to strategic planning

These twenty conversations weren’t complaints. They were signals. Signals that MATs are entering the same evolution other areas went through, finance, curriculum, attendance, where Trust-level systems became non-negotiable.

The leaders who act early on this shift won’t just be “compliant”.

• They’ll be confident.
• Prepared.
• Inspection-ready.
• And able to govern with clarity instead of worry.

If you’re a MAT leader and you recognise these patterns, you’re not alone.

In fact, you’re ahead, because you’re seeing the assurance gap before it becomes an incident, an inspection outcome, or a headline.

And this conversation is only just beginning.

If you want to connect and see how School SCR can support your Trust, drop me an email (jay.ashcroft@schoolscr.co.uk) or connect with me on LinkedIn.