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SCR Queries

Hello

I work in HR in an Independent school and I have a couple of queries regarding the SCR and the engagement of individuals with the school. I wonder if people could tell me their opinion of the following:

1. How long do you keep departed staff members on your SCR? My understanding is that you are not required to keep them on at all once they have left, but I feel that this information is often useful if you need to refer back to someone's record/ dates of employment/ for specific reasons (providing references for example). 

2. Do you save/ print out proof of Prohibition Order Checks or Barred List checks, or do you think recording the date on the SCR only is sufficient?

3. One of the possible ID checks for new staff include a utility bill/ bank statement. Do you accept electronic versions of these?

4. What processes do you follow for external visitors? 

5. During an inspection, what were unexpected things that Inspectors picked up on/ asked about?

Thank you in advance for your help!

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  • Hi Lauren, I work in a large local authority HR department which supports schools, we advise leavers are removed from the main SCR but no issue having a separate leavers version. A print out of the prohibition check can be saved on file however the barred list as part of DBS shouldn’t be retained on file. Electronic bank statements if on usual header etc. are ok as a lot of people can only access this way now. In terms of visitors, do you mean in the context of SCR and requiring checks?
  • Hi Lauren,

    I work in a similar school and happy to connect if there are any ways I can help. In answer to your specific questions:
    1. Our SCR is a spreadsheet with tabs for multiple types. We have a new SCR for each academic year, saving those from prior years. One of the tabs is for 'leavers', which we simply move a person into when they are no longer actively working for us.
    2. For checks with a specific individual outcome, we'll keep a printed copy on file (other than the DBS obviously). For those where it's simply a long list to check the person against, we decided that it would be a data breach of the other people on the list to keep their details, so we just make a note of the check date. This did come up as a point during our compliance inspection, but the inspector ultimately agreed our position on it.
    3. Yes.
    4. Visitors don't go on the SCR or through our checking process as long as they are accompanied at all times by a checked member of our staff. If they are regular visitors with access to site, when we would check them according to our schedule (we have a table of who is checked for what according to ISI, which I'm happy to share if that helps).
    5. Our inspector felt we should have prohibition from management checks for our senior support staff. We found the line in the guidance that contradicted this position (it said it was only for support staff on SMT) which he accepted. It helped that our head of compliance could pretty much quote the ISI guidance word for word by that point.

    Do get in touch if there are other things I can help with.

    Nina
  • Hi Lauren, I also work in an independent school and at our last inspection we were advised to keep leavers on a separate tab abs only up until the point of the next inspection .

    We save copies of prohibition and barred list checks with other names redacted.