Education Section 175/157 Audit Process

Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 introduced statutory duties for Schools/settings, governing bodies and local authorities. Section 175/157 guidance requires governing bodies to carry out an annual review of the school’s policies and procedures and to provide information to the LA about how the duties set out in the guidance have been discharged. Independent School’s/setting’s and Academies are covered under Section 157 of the same Act.

Cornwall Council has developed a self-assessment audit tool based on agreed benchmarks and standards. The tool requests auditors to self-assess how well they are meeting elements of standards by scoring themselves from 1 to 5 in each section, where 1 is not applicable and 5 is safeguarding areas fully addressed. Schools are asked to provide evidence and identify any actions based on their score and a lead person is appointed to monitor the implementation of the action plan and to provide feedback and evidence against agreed action plans.

The Section 175/157 process document can be found here