Welsh Oversight Gap Exposed: Independent Investigations Abandoned Since 2018
The revelation that there has been no national oversight of child safeguarding reviews in schools since 2018 has unsettled educators, parents and policy-makers alike. In Wales, the scheme that once funded independent inquiries — the Independent Investigation Service (IIS) established after the Clywch report — was dismantled following a contract review, with government funding withdrawn and responsibilities transferred to school governors and local authorities. This structural change left a vacuum at the national level that is now linked to repeated critiques by experts and children’s advocates.
Stakeholders such as the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Rocio Cifuentes, and long-standing figures in safeguarding have highlighted the risks that follow when centralised mechanisms are removed. Their core concern is not only accountability but also the practical loss of a consistent method for monitoring implementation of recommendations from serious case reviews. The discovery that some local authorities commissioned only summaries rather than full investigative reports deepens distrust and raises questions about the transparency of follow-up actions.
How the IIS once functioned and why its removal matters
When the IIS was set up in 2006, it responded to a national scandal and established a route for fully independent examinations when harm to pupils was alleged. The structure provided: clear independence, central funding, consistent standards and a mechanism to ensure that recommendations were tracked beyond the immediate setting. Once removed, those safeguards fragmented across multiple local bodies with varying capacity and priorities.
- Centralised independence: a consistent standard for investigations across schools.
- Funding and expertise: dedicated resources that were lost in 2018.
- National learning: a way to collate recommendations so other schools could benefit.
Experts such as Prof Sir Malcolm Evans warned that withdrawing oversight makes future abuses more likely to reoccur. He argued that the very purpose of national scrutiny is to prevent systemic lapses. Similarly, Helen Mary Jones — formerly involved with assembly-level responses to Clywch — has repeatedly questioned who remains answerable when recommendations are not implemented, pointing to a clear accountability deficit.
The contemporary context is stark. In a case that has sharpened attention, a former headteacher, Neil Foden, was jailed in 2024 after being found guilty of sexual abuse involving multiple pupils over several years. The impending publication of a child practice review into that case has been a catalyst for renewed calls for national mechanisms that guarantee thorough, published and monitored investigations. Without these, families and communities risk being left with partial findings and no assurance that lessons have been acted upon.
- Loss of central reporting has led to inconsistent investigation quality.
- Families have reported difficulty accessing full reports or understanding actions taken.
- Local authorities vary widely in capacity and willingness to follow up.
The practical outcome is that schools, parents and children can no longer rely on a predictable national process for scrutiny and improvement. This revelation also provides an important comparative backdrop to other parts of the UK where debates on oversight and school accountability are ongoing, as seen in broader analyses of system-wide challenges across England and beyond. The insight here is clear: the absence of a national oversight mechanism removes an essential layer of protection for children and undermines public confidence in the system.
Accountability and Governance Failings in School Safeguarding Systems
The question of who is responsible when safeguarding fails is central to the backlash ministers now face. With the dismantling of a national investigative scheme, the burden of appointing independent investigators often falls to school governing bodies and local authorities. Yet the practice varies and the legal and practical obligations can be confused. The lack of mandatory publication and national review of recommendations leaves implementation and monitoring without a reliable owner.
In many cases, governance structures were never designed to handle major safeguarding investigations at scale. Governors are typically volunteers with limited training; local authorities may lack capacity or consistency across regions. This has created a patchwork of responses that fails to meet the expectations of families and safeguarding specialists.
Practical governance failures and their consequences
Accountability problems show up in several predictable ways: delayed investigations, uneven standards, limited publication and, crucially, no centralized route to ensure system-wide learning. Recent commentary has compared these failings to other accountability gaps in education — such as those highlighted by analyses of pandemic-era missteps — underscoring the long-term costs of weak oversight.
- Ambiguous responsibilities: who signs off on implementation is often unclear.
- Variable capacity: local authorities differ in resourcing and expertise.
- Publication gaps: families may receive summaries instead of full reports, limiting scrutiny.
Practical examples illustrate the challenge. In some localities, independent investigators are appointed but without standard terms of reference, producing reports that are non-comparable in scope. In others, investigators are engaged only after significant delay, compromising evidence gathering. These procedural weaknesses make it harder to hold institutions to account and to prevent repetition of harm.
Key stakeholders argue for a hybrid model: local investigations supported by national oversight to ensure consistency and learning. The aim would be to preserve the immediacy and context-sensitivity of local inquiry while ensuring that reports and recommendations feed into a centralized learning loop. This hybrid would also support training, quality assurance and publication standards.
- Standardised terms of reference for all investigations.
- Obligation to publish full reports or a clear explanation if publication is restricted.
- Central tracking of recommendations to guarantee follow-through.
Some commentators draw lessons from other education accountability areas. For instance, reviews of missteps during the pandemic highlighted the need for clearer lines of oversight and a national memory of actions taken. Linking these lessons to safeguarding points to a practical reform agenda: create mandatory publication protocols, strengthen governor training and reintroduce a national oversight function that can verify implementation.
Embedding such reforms would close obvious accountability gaps and demonstrate to families and communities that safeguarding failures will be consistently investigated, reported and rectified. The take-away is simple: accountability is not complete until recommendations are demonstrably implemented and publicly tracked.
Impact on Children, Families and the Role of Charities in Safeguarding
The human cost of governance failure is borne most heavily by children and families. When investigations are incomplete, delayed or undisclosed, survivors lose confidence that the system will protect them and that lessons will be learned. This is where national and international child-focused organisations play an indispensable role. Groups such as UNICEF, Save the Children, ChildSafe, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Childline, World Vision, Plan International, Barnardo’s, the Safe Schools Alliance and the Children’s Defense Fund provide advocacy, specialist services and pressure to maintain standards.
These organisations provide both direct support to affected children and families and systemic recommendations that enrich safeguarding practices. For instance, charities often maintain helplines, therapeutic services and legal guidance that are not always available from statutory services. In cases where local investigations are questioned, independent organisations can act as watchdogs and amplifiers for families seeking answers.
Examples and roles charities play in practice
Consider a fictional but representative case: headteacher Amina Roberts uncovers allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a staff member. With no clear national mechanism to guide the response, Amina turns to local authority advice and referral to external specialists. In parallel, the family contacts a national charity for counselling and to understand their rights. That combined statutory and charitable response helps to stabilise the child’s immediate needs, yet without central oversight, long-term assurance that recommendations will be shared with other schools is missing.
- Immediate support: helplines and trauma services offered by charities.
- Legal and advocacy support: families accessing independent advice when investigations stall.
- Policy influence: charities compiling evidence to push for systemic reform.
Charities also contribute to training for school staff, create child-friendly reporting routes and develop materials that help schools implement best practice. When national oversight is absent, these organisations often step into the breach by gathering evidence and campaigning for better protections. Their cross-national perspective is valuable: practices developed by organisations working internationally can be adapted to local contexts to improve detection, reporting and prevention.
Recent local incidents — such as high-profile educator arrests and absenteeism concerns in certain regions — have shown how charities and community groups can provide crisis support while lobbying for policy change. For example, in the wake of a regional safeguarding scandal that drew media coverage, charities coordinated to ensure families had access to counselling and legal guidance while pushing authorities for transparent reviews.
- Coordination between charities and schools strengthens immediate child protection.
- Independent monitoring by NGOs increases public scrutiny of local practices.
- Charitable partnerships help scale specialist services where local capacity is limited.
The essential insight is that charities are not a substitute for national oversight but they are critical partners in ensuring children receive support and that systemic issues remain visible to the public and to policy-makers. Families need both immediate care and the long-term assurance that lessons are learned at a national level.
Policy Debates and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Shifts in Power and Safeguarding
National debates have become heated as ministers defend a wide-ranging legislative programme while critics highlight potential weaknesses in safeguarding approaches. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has driven much of the discussion, with proposals touching on home education checks, unique pupil identifiers and changes to academy freedoms. Political exchanges in parliament have often focused on whether new laws will strengthen protections or further fragment responsibility.
Opposition voices and commentators argue that transferring more discretion to academies or reducing central oversight risks inconsistent safeguarding across regions. Proponents of reform claim that localised control can be more responsive, provided that robust checks and data-sharing measures exist. The tension between local autonomy and national standards is a core issue in current policy debates.
Key legislative elements and their safeguarding implications
Several policy elements have direct implications for safeguarding. Proposals to require councils to hold registers of children not in school and to create unique numbers for pupils aim to improve tracking and prevent children slipping through the system. Yet critics warn that without enforced independent investigative standards and publication requirements, data improvements alone will not prevent abuse.
- Registers for children not in school: intended to protect vulnerable children taught at home.
- Unique pupil identifiers: technical fixes that require governance to be effective.
- Academy freedoms: potential to create uneven safeguarding practice if not robustly monitored.
Internationally, the debate mirrors other worrying trends: attempts to control curriculum content and localised decision-making have coincided with cases where the absence of central oversight allowed abuses to persist. For UK educators and policy-makers, the question is how to reconcile local innovation with uniform safeguarding standards. Measures that strengthen data collection and local responsibility must be paired with quality assurance, publication rules and a mechanism to ensure recommendations are implemented.
Policy commentators have drawn links between safeguarding debates and other education policy controversies. Coverage of high-profile local incidents has been compared to systemic problems seen elsewhere, with analysts citing how weak accountability exacerbated harm. In that context, some propose reinstating a national oversight function that operates as a quality assurance body rather than a replacement for local investigations.
- Legislative change without enforcement risks patchy protection.
- Data systems must be accompanied by publication and monitoring rules.
- A balance of local responsiveness and national standards is required.
In short, legislative reform presents opportunities and risks. The debate must move beyond technical fixes towards ensuring that every statutory change strengthens the capacity to investigate, publish and monitor safeguarding outcomes. This balance is essential if national confidence is to be restored.
Practical Steps for Schools, Governors and Communities to Strengthen Safeguarding
Faced with clear weaknesses in national oversight, schools, governors and communities can take concrete actions now to reduce risk and rebuild trust. Headteacher Amina Roberts provides a practical thread: when she learned of systemic shortcomings, she led a local initiative to tighten procedures, partner with charities and ensure transparency. Her approach offers a replicable checklist for school leaders and local authorities seeking immediate improvement.
Effective action combines procedural clarity, training, partnerships and transparent communication with families. Below are concrete steps that any school governing body can adopt immediately while advocating for broader systemic reform.
Checklist of priority actions for immediate implementation
- Appoint an independent investigator as soon as an allegation is credible and ensure their remit is consistent with national best practice.
- Publish full reports or clear redacted summaries with rationale for any confidentiality redactions and a timeline for follow-up actions.
- Track recommendations in a clear action plan with named leads and review dates, visible to governors and, where appropriate, to parent representatives.
- Partner with charities such as NSPCC, Barnardo’s or Childline to provide specialist support and independent advocacy for families.
- Invest in training for governors and staff on signs of harm, investigative process and child-first interviewing techniques.
- Create clear reporting routes for pupils and families, including access to external helplines run by organisations like Save the Children and ChildSafe.
Practical examples include designing a published template for investigation reports that sets minimum standards and publishing an annual safeguarding review that lists implemented recommendations. Schools can also form local consortiums that share trained independent investigators, ensuring quality and reducing conflict-of-interest concerns. Local authorities can support by maintaining a roster of vetted investigators and by committing to publish aggregated learning from cases.
Community engagement matters. Parents and pupils must know what will happen when allegations arise. Schools that openly explain procedures and publish anonymised learning reports restore confidence. Collaborations with international and national NGOs — including UNICEF, World Vision and Plan International — can bring additional expertise, particularly in trauma-informed practice.
- Local consortia of schools reduce costs and increase investigative quality.
- Publicly tracked action plans make follow-through visible to families.
- Long-term partnerships with charities build resilience and specialist capacity.
Finally, advocacy remains essential: schools and governors should push for statutory reforms that mandate transparent investigation publication and reintroduce a national oversight mechanism focused on quality assurance. Until that governance gap is closed, practical measures at the school and community level will prevent harm and build the foundations for systemic restoration. The clear insight is that local action combined with national reform advocacy provides the most immediate and sustainable path to safer schools.