Ministers must tackle our dangerous safeguarding blind spot

I spend considerable time reviewing the files schools hold on external providers. When it comes to unregistered alternative provision (AP), we have a systemic blind spot that represents a fundamental safeguarding failure.

To begin with, unregistered providers operate not in a legal framework so much as a patchwork of ‘expectations’. They are encouraged to work towards Ofsted’s pre-registration standards, but they aren’t legally required to maintain a single central record (SCR) and can’t access the DfE’s teacher services portal to conduct mandatory pre-employment checks.

Without that access, many resort to third-party providers. But some of these claim to deliver instant prohibition checks and DBS checks “in minutes”. When an enhanced DBS check takes seven to 14 days on average, this alone should raise eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the education act’s definition of a ‘pupil’ applies only to registered schools. Yet these registered schools use unregistered providers to teach children whose needs they can’t meet.

For all practical purposes, these young people remain pupils of the referring school. But are they still legally a ‘pupil’, or does their placement strip them of the safeguards attached to that status?

And if unregistered providers lack formal recognition, are they even entitled to conduct prohibition checks?

Here’s the really alarming part. Section 128 of the 2008 education and skills act does not prevent disqualified individuals from managing unregistered providers. Someone barred from running a registered independent school today could legally open an unregistered AP tomorrow.

Similarly, while the law prohibits certain individuals from teaching, unregistered providers have no official way to verify whether those they are employing to teach have a prohibition order.

The gap in oversight is deeply unsettling

In April, I submitted a freedom of information request to the department for education asking how many unregistered AP providers are using the official system to check teachers against the prohibition list.

The response was telling: they “do not typically” do so. “Desk research has shown that currently, one unregistered AP provider has access to [it].”

“We do not record the precise reason why a user is viewing a teacher record […]. We cannot therefore say whether an organisation’s use of [this service] is definitively a check against the prohibited list.”

We know from Schools Week’s investigation that thousands of children are being educated in unregistered APs.

Without a formal list of them, and with no requirement for them to log or justify the purpose of status checks, no one knows how many providers there are, what vetting is being done or if it’s being done at all.

The DfE’s ongoing call for evidence only reinforces concerns. While unregistered APs are expected to have safeguarding measures, there is no formal mechanism to ensure compliance.

Safer recruitment processes are, to some extent, an indicator of the quality of wider safeguarding culture. Weaknesses in one often indicate weaknesses in the other. The lack of expectation, oversight or inspection means such weaknesses will be missed.

Recognising the significant safeguarding limitations faced by unregistered APs, our trust works with them to ensure essential pre-employment checks are carried out through legally compliant routes. In essence, we facilitate these through our registered schools.

But this is not and cannot be a substitute for a regulatory framework; it is a practical and legally sound solution to bridge the gap in oversight which, even with our vigilance and overreach, remains deeply unsettling.

Unregistered AP can be a lifeline for excluded or at-risk pupils, but it must not be a blind spot for safeguarding failures.

DfE should mandate safeguarding compliance for all schools using unregistered APs, placing the onus on them to verify providers.

Ultimately, we need:

• explicit guidance on how unregistered providers must vet staff, including mandated access to the DfE portal (possibly via sponsoring schools or local authorities)
• to close the Section 128 loophole to prevent disqualified individuals from operating AP settings.
• transparency from third-party vetting services: what data are they using, and how it is validated

The DfE, Ofsted and schools must work together to tackle this untenable grey area. Vulnerable children deserve systems that protect them, and we can’t rely on goodwill to provide that.