If you have serious concerns about a child’s safety or wellbeing you should contact your local children’s services team and/or the Designated Safeguarding Lead at the school. If you believe that a crime may have been committed or a child is in immediate danger, call 999.
If you want to complain about an independent school, you should follow the school’s complaints procedure. Every school in England must have one and it should be published on the school’s website.
The Department for Education cannot investigate or intervene in individual complaints about independent schools. However, the Department for Education has certain powers as a regulator if an independent school is not meeting standards set by Department for Education for:
• education
• pupil welfare and health and safety
• school premises
• staff suitability
• making information available to parents
• spiritual, moral, social or cultural development of students
If you have a concern about an independent school, relating to the standards, you should report it to Department for Education.
They can use the information in one of three ways: to either bring forward a future school inspection, ask ISI to do an additional inspection to look at pupil welfare, health and safety or to ask ISI to take the concerns it has received into account when the school is next inspected.
To raise a concern with the Department for Education about an independent school please fill out the form here.