The 12 Principles of Safeguarding Agility: A Self-Assessment for Schools

I had the opportunity to present on the two concepts of Humility and Agility in Child Safeguarding at a conference here in Hong Kong. I’ve found both concepts provide value in my work in child protection.

Within any educational context, be it inclusive education, student wellbeing, or child protection, questions emerge through engagement. Questions such as “Why do I do this?” or “What would be the best way to do X?”

I find there are plenty of resources available on the what questions. For example, a quick search for “school safeguarding policy” turns up dozens of Word and PDF documents ready for download.

A strong safeguarding policy is vital. It will describe the what, the why and the who. Policy tends not to focus on the how, as that factors into procedures and these change more often (Page, 2016).

Let’s reflect on another how (which links with the why) on a personal level: “Why do I do what I do, in the way that I do?” (See: Simon Sinek’s work¹) Which is where my personal reflection on these two concepts of humility and agility originates.

Inspired by books such as Principles (Dalio, 2017), or You Need a Manifesto (Burgess-Auburn & Griffith, 2022), I’ve found it helpful to try to capture your own internal compass in words. Dalio defines principles as follows: “Principles are concepts that can be applied over and over again in similar circumstances as distinct from narrow answers to specific questions. Every game has principles that successful players master to achieve winning results. So does life. Principles are ways of successfully dealing with the laws of nature or the laws of life.”

For me, principles are foundational guideposts by which we make our decisions. In complex situations, going back to our core principles is helpful. Just as helpful for me is maintaining a humble mindset. With that in mind, let’s explore these two concepts, starting with humility.

Humility

I’ve adopted the definition from the APA Dictionary:

On a personal level, I admire professionals who embody humility, and I’ve faced challenges when working with people on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I seek to adopt humility as an attitude and use it in my leadership style. This means I seek to act with personal humility, whilst promoting organisational humility. Both are significant. Working in an organisation where humility is not strived for can, in my experience, be risky. Power imbalances appear, blind spots emerge in organisational strategy and mistakes lead to harsh responses. Similarly, I’ve experienced the opposite, where mistakes are treated as learning opportunities and colleagues celebrate achievements, whilst striving for a collective sense of humility.

Keeping each other humble within the workplace is an important act to prevent us from becoming too sure of ourselves, too cocky, or arrogant. It serves the purpose of keeping us sharp. We can celebrate each other’s successes, but remain vigilant to not let them influence our perception and judgment of each other.

Agility

Agile thinking entered the collective workforce back in 2001, with the introduction of the Agile Manifesto (Beck et al., 2001). Whilst conceived to help restructure the field of software development, the 12 principles have since been adopted by different fields. It’s led to the introduction of productivity approaches such as scrum or kanban boards.

In my work in education I’ve felt that school development is an iterative process, one which is never finished in a changing world. When I came across these 12 agile principles, I adapted them to my work in safeguarding and child protection. To help you do the same, I’ve compiled a list of reflective questions below, with an easy-to-use PDF download that captures all key questions.

I found that the 12 principles of Agile required mild modification to principles 1 and 9 to fit the educational safeguarding context:

1. Student Safety: Is student safety the paramount consideration in all processes?
2. Changing Requirements: Are all our procedures and policies up to date with (legal) requirements?
3. Frequent Delivery: Do we deliver interventions and support in safeguarding matters?
4. Promoting Collaboration: Can we showcase collaborative efforts, in our school and with the wider community?
5. Motivated Individuals: Are all staff motivated to take on their safeguarding responsibility?
6. Face to Face Meetings: Do we prioritise regular face to face meetings between safeguarding staff in school?
7. Maintain a Constant Pace: Do we regularly provide training, using a variety of delivery methods, to a variety of groups?
8. Measure Progress: What tools do we use to measure progress in our safeguarding developments?
9. Professional Excellence: Are all our staff (incl. leads) trained to the best of our ability?
10. Simplicity: Have we regularly reviewed our procedures and tools to be as simple as possible?
11. Self-organised Teams: Is our safeguarding team empowered to organise themselves based on need?
12. Continuous Improvement: Do we continuously engage in activities to help us improve our preventative and responsive actions?

Download the brief self-assessment tool here

• Safeguarding Agility Check
  A brief self-assessment tool that schools can use to check their current practices against the twelve principles of safeguarding agility.

Closing thoughts on school culture

It’s important to recognise that both concepts of humility and agility feed into school culture.

John Amaechi (2021) defines culture as a visible manifestation of the choices and decisions made every day in the workplace: “Culture is the accumulation of millions of choices made by each colleague. People make choices. And those choices make culture. People don’t like to believe that culture can be defined…”

With this definition in mind, culture is no longer this nebulous thing that is hard to define. Yes, we all have gut feelings when it comes to the workplace. In seeking to make cultural changes, Amaechi’s definition helps us to put change into action.

In short: stay humble, be agile.

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