School Connection / Feature
After the antisemitism review: the safeguarding decisions every school should revisit
The national review creates a clear moment for school leadership. The useful response is a careful examination of reporting, support and staff confidence, with an honest distinction between existing responsibilities and measures still to be implemented.
The answer in brief
The leadership decision
A pupil should not have to decide whether an experience is serious enough for adults to take it seriously. That is the starting point for a school review following the publication of Sir David Bell’s independent review into antisemitism. Leaders can begin with a concrete question: if a pupil or colleague raised a concern tomorrow, could the school show how it would listen, assess risk, provide support and return to check whether that support had worked?
The Department for Education published the review on 21 October and accepted all 27 recommendations. Its announced response includes training, stronger guidance and improvements to incident reporting. Schools should follow implementation carefully. Acceptance of a recommendation does not mean every proposed measure has already become a new statutory requirement.2
- Can a pupil or colleague explain how to raise a concern?
- Who checks that support remains effective after the immediate response?
- What evidence will governors receive without exposing personal information?
01 / Reporting
Begin with the route a person would actually use
Our suggested first exercise is deliberately small. Ask a safeguarding leader and a pastoral colleague to trace a hypothetical concern from first disclosure to review. Include a concern raised by a friend, a parent or a member of support staff. Check the route during a lesson, on transport and after an online incident. The point is to find uncertainty before a child meets it.3
Examine whether the person receiving the concern knows whom to contact and what to record. Does the process depend on one trusted teacher being available? Can a pupil explain the concern privately? Can a family obtain a response without repeatedly retelling what happened? A reporting mechanism that exists on a website may still be difficult to use in practice.
02 / Support
Separate the immediate response from the continuing support
A leadership review should distinguish stopping an incident from helping the affected person feel safe afterwards. Identify who will make contact, how the pupil’s wishes will be heard and how arrangements will be reviewed. Avoid assuming that a sanction closes the matter. An apparently ordinary lesson, journey or social interaction may now feel different to the person involved.
For staff, use the relevant employment and safeguarding routes and make support accessible without expecting a colleague to become the school’s spokesperson on Jewish life or current affairs. Leaders should consider confidentiality, supervision and workload when asking staff to contribute to wider improvement. Personal experience can inform understanding, but participation should be voluntary and handled sensitively.
03 / Recording
Make the review capable of finding a pattern
The review identifies inconsistent recognition and recording as barriers to an effective response and recommends accessible reporting and specific incident categorisation. Its attention to cumulative harm is important: apparently separate events may form a repeated experience for one person. Leaders should read the relevant findings and recommendations alongside their existing safeguarding and behaviour arrangements.1
Our practical recommendation is to test whether information can be joined responsibly across those arrangements. Use a fictional example rather than circulate identifiable case material. Ask whether a repeated concern would be visible to the person responsible for reviewing it, whether an action has an owner and whether a follow-up date is recorded. Seek advice before changing access permissions or sharing sensitive records.
04 / Staff confidence
Teach the response as well as the terminology
A useful staff discussion should leave people more confident about their next action. Work through a short scenario: a pupil reports an antisemitic remark but asks the adult to do nothing. What would the adult say, whom would they consult and how would they explain the limits of confidentiality? Review the answer through the school’s current procedures. A training session should make escalation clearer, not encourage improvised investigations.
Where external support is needed, define the gap before commissioning it. Specialist anti-racism education, safeguarding advice, pastoral support and employment advice serve different purposes. Ask prospective contributors how their material suits the age group, how difficult questions are handled and how effectiveness will be reviewed. Attendance at a session alone is a weak measure of whether practice has improved.
05 / Curriculum and discussion
Protect thoughtful teaching and a safe learning environment
Our editorial view is that leaders should review the conditions for respectful discussion as well as the content selected. Staff need a clear way to pause a harmful exchange, support a pupil and seek help with a difficult question. The aim is a classroom where pupils can learn and ask questions without being expected to answer for an identity, religion or community.
Consider how external speakers, assemblies and online resources are checked. Who considers age suitability, educational purpose and the likely questions afterwards? A school should be able to explain its decisions coherently. For contested material, obtain appropriate professional advice and use current impartiality and safeguarding guidance. This article does not offer a substitute legal interpretation of individual cases.
06 / Governance
Ask for evidence of a working response
Governors do not need personal case files to ask useful questions. They can ask leaders to explain reporting access, staff preparation, oversight and how support is reviewed. When receiving an anonymised account, consider the small numbers involved and the risk of identifying individuals. Agree what can be reported safely and what assurance requires a more restricted route.
A low recorded incident count should prompt a question about confidence in reporting, rather than an automatic declaration of success. Equally, a rise after changes to reporting may reflect improved visibility. Leaders should explain the context, the response and what they are learning. Avoid turning a sensitive safeguarding review into a target to reduce recorded concerns.
07 / A practical month
Turn the review into a short, owned improvement plan
In the first week, name the executive lead and test the reporting route. Over the following fortnight, address the most immediate uncertainty in staff practice and support arrangements. By the next governance discussion, bring a short record of what was checked, what changed and what remains unresolved. These are suggested review stages, not a national compliance timetable.
Keep the plan proportionate. If a reporting route is unclear, fix the route and explain the change before commissioning a large new policy package. If specialist understanding is weak, choose support with a defined purpose. Return to the people who use the arrangements and ask whether the change made access easier. The intended outcome is a response that works reliably for the person seeking help.
08 / Review record
Use the leadership review record
The downloadable record provides a starting point for allocating responsibility and recording evidence. It contains no personal case information and should not be used to gather it. Keep any operational safeguarding records in the school’s approved systems. Use the review to identify an owner, an action and a return date for each unresolved question.
From evidence to action
Practical leadership review
Use this working record with the relevant leaders. Add your findings, evidence reference, action, due date and verification. Suggested owners should be adapted to your organisation.
| Review area | Suggested owner | Question to resolve |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting | Safeguarding lead | Can pupils, families and staff use the route? |
| Response | Headteacher | Who assesses the immediate concern? |
| Support | Pastoral lead | Who follows up and when? |
| Records | Safeguarding lead | Can repeated concerns be seen appropriately? |
| Staff | Workforce lead | Which response needs further preparation? |
| Resources | Curriculum lead | How are speakers and materials checked? |
| Governance | Chair | What assurance can be shared safely? |
| Follow-up | Executive | What remains unresolved? |
Leadership questions
Questions that turn the development into a governing conversation.
Board test
Can a pupil or colleague explain how to raise a concern?
Board test
Who checks that support remains effective after the immediate response?
Board test
What evidence will governors receive without exposing personal information?
Evidence boundary
What this analysis does not prove.
- This is School Connection’s suggested leadership review, not a new statutory checklist.
- The review’s evidence includes commissioned research and submissions; it is not a census of every school.
- Implementation of accepted recommendations must be tracked separately from existing guidance.
What we are monitoring next
Publication is the beginning of the watch.
- DfE implementation announcements and revised guidance.
- Availability and scope of nationally supported training.
Approved public intelligence
What the live evidence is showing now.
School Connection continues to monitor inclusion, attendance & safeguarding evidence. New machine-detected signals remain private editorial candidates until a human editor investigates and approves them for publication.
This panel reads only the editor-approved School Connection public feed. It never exposes raw Observatory records, private candidates, contacts, commercial opportunities or internal scores.
Continue the evidence trail
Follow the question through the series
Sources and methodology
Evidence used in this analysis
School Connection links to the primary source behind each material claim. Source status, period and limitations are stated so readers can reproduce the evidence trail.
- 01
Department for Education · 21 October 2026
Independent review into antisemitism in schools and colleges
Review published 21 October; recommendations and evidence annex. - 02
Department for Education · Response published 21 October 2026
Government response to the independent review
Government response added 21 October; original call for evidence dates from April. - 03
Department for Education · 21 October 2026
Independent review: full report
Primary report, including recognition, reporting and support recommendations.