Understanding Your Rating
Your rating answers one question: is your safeguarding system actually working?
Not “do you have policies” — but are people following them, reviewing them, meeting about them, and dealing with problems when they come up?
Four badges. The full picture.
Every time you log in, you see four badges. Together they answer whether your safeguarding system is genuinely functioning — not just on paper, but in practice. Each one measures a different aspect of governance behaviour:
Grade is your overall result. Coverage tells you how much of your system is up to date. Rhythm tells you whether your team is meeting as often as it committed to. Vigilance tells you whether concerns are being spotted and dealt with. That’s it.
The four badges decoded.
Badge 1: Grade
“Overall, how mature is our safeguarding governance?“
What this is
Your Grade is a single letter that summarizes everything. It’s built from the other three badges — Coverage, Rhythm, and Vigilance — plus some detail you can explore in the full rating view.
The important rule: your lowest dimension sets the ceiling. If three areas are strong but one is weak, the weak area holds your Grade back. A safeguarding system is only as strong as its weakest part.
How it works
Under the surface, the system measures four dimensions: Monitoring Coverage, Review Coverage (these combine into your Coverage badge), Rhythm, and Responsiveness (part of your Vigilance badge). All four must reach a threshold for the Grade to be awarded. Then an Emergence modifier — whether your team is actively spotting new risks — can nudge the Grade up or down by one notch.
The grading scale
These thresholds may look modest compared to school grades, but achieving even a C in Jigsaw requires sustained governance effort across every dimension — something that goes far beyond what typical compliance frameworks demand.
| Grade | All dimensions must reach | What it means | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A+ | 90%+ | Exceptional governance across all dimensions | |
| A | 80%+ | Very well-maintained system | |
| A- | 70%+ | Strong, with minor gaps | |
| B+ | 60%+ | Good, but some areas need attention | |
| B | 50%+ | Reasonable, with noticeable gaps | |
| B- | 40%+ | Below expectations — several areas overdue | |
| C | 30%+ | Minimum viable governance — significant work needed | |
| NR | Below 30% | Not Rated — not enough to assign a grade |
Why this matters
Your Grade gives boards, leadership, and external stakeholders an at-a-glance understanding of governance health. It says: “we’re not just claiming to have safeguarding in place — here’s the evidence, independently measured.” Aiming for A- or above demonstrates a genuinely mature system.
Badge 2: Coverage
“How much of our system is up to date right now?”
What this is
Your Jigsaw system is made up of many entries — risk assessments, system goals, controls, and incident responses. Every one of these has a next review date: the date by which someone needs to look at it again.
Coverage is simply the percentage of those entries where the review date hasn’t passed yet. If the date is in the future, it’s on schedule. If it’s in the past, it’s overdue.
Two types of coverage
The badge on your dashboard shows a combined number, but underneath it Jigsaw actually tracks two types:
Monitoring Coverage is about day-to-day operational checks. Are the right adults in the right rooms? Are screening records current? Are the controls you’ve put in place actually being followed? These need regular, frequent attention.
Review Coverage is about bigger-picture reassessment. Is your safeguarding policy still right? Do your risk assessments reflect current reality? Has anything changed that means your approach needs updating? These happen less frequently, but they’re just as important.
You can see both numbers in the full rating view. Both feed separately into your Grade calculation — so strong monitoring can’t mask weak strategic review, or vice versa.
Why this matters
A screening policy only protects people if it’s being reviewed and followed. A risk assessment only has value if it reflects current reality. Coverage tells you what proportion of your safeguarding system is genuinely current.
Badge 3: Rhythm
“Are we meeting — and reporting to our board — as often as we said we would?”
What this is
When you set up your Jigsaw system, your team made two commitments: “We will hold a Jigsaw Team meeting every X days” and “We will report to our Board every Y days.” Rhythm measures whether you’re keeping both promises.
Over the last 12 months, how many meetings and board reports should have happened based on your committed schedule, and how many actually happened? Rhythm is the percentage. Meetings and board reports count in one pool, weighted by how often you committed to each — commit to monthly meetings and quarterly board reports and a full year expects sixteen kept promises. Young organizations are measured only against the window since they joined, and the board-report side starts counting three months after its frequency is first set.
How it works
If your team committed to meeting every 30 days, you should hold about 12 meetings a year. If you actually completed 8, your Rhythm is 67%.
If you committed to every 14 days, you’d expect about 26 meetings. Completing 24 would give you 92%.
Why this matters
Governance meetings are where decisions get made, flagged items get discussed, and reviews get assigned. Without regular meetings, everything else stalls. Rhythm measures whether the engine of your governance system is actually running.
Badge 4: Vigilance
“Are we spotting concerns and dealing with them?”
What this is
Vigilance combines two related measures into a single badge. The number tells you what percentage of flagged concerns have been dealt with. The arrow tells you whether your team is actively spotting new risks.
Together, they answer: are things going in to the system (people are flagging concerns) and are they coming out (those concerns are getting resolved)?
Reading the badge
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| 75% ↑ | 75% of flagged items resolved, and more new concerns being flagged than last quarter — both responsive and vigilant |
| 82% → | 82% resolved, steady rate of flagging — a well-functioning system |
| 40% ↓ | Only 40% resolved and flagging has dropped off — concerns are piling up and new risks may be going unnoticed |
| — ↑ | No resolution data yet, but the team is actively flagging concerns — normal for a new system |
What counts as resolved?
When someone flags a concern, the team can promote it to a meeting agenda for discussion, create a task to address it, or resolve it directly. All of these count. Deferring an item repeatedly doesn’t — the system tracks how many times something has been deferred, so persistent avoidance becomes visible.
The system also adjusts for organization size. Smaller organizations get more time to resolve concerns (120 days) because they may have fewer resources. Larger organizations are expected to be faster (60 days). New organizations also get a settling-in period: Responsiveness joins your Grade three months after the later of joining Jigsaw or identifying your first risk zone, so an empty flag record during setup never scores against you.
The Emergence arrow explained
The arrow compares how many new items were flagged in the last 90 days versus the previous 90 days. ↑ means the team is flagging more — they’re actively looking for risks. → means a steady rate. ↓ means flagging has dropped off, which could signal complacency. This arrow also affects your Grade: ↑ nudges it up one notch, ↓ pushes it down one notch.
Why this matters
A system that’s good at spotting problems but slow at dealing with them isn’t protecting anyone. A system that resolves everything but has stopped looking for new risks is getting complacent. Vigilance measures both sides — and rewards organizations that are genuinely alert.
Reading the badges together
A well-governed organization
All dimensions are strong. The team meets regularly, keeps checks current, and deals with flagged items promptly while actively spotting new risks. The ↑ arrow boosted what would have been a B+ to an A-. This is the profile of an organization that can confidently demonstrate its governance to a board, insurer, or regulator.
An organization just getting started
Coverage is low because the system is still being built out. But Rhythm shows the team is meeting, the ↑ arrow shows they’re actively flagging things, and once those flagged items start getting resolved, the Vigilance percentage will appear. The system is young, not broken.
An organization losing momentum
Coverage has slipped – from the well-governed organization. Meetings are irregular. Flagged items are sitting unresolved, and the team has stopped flagging new concerns altogether. The ↓ arrow knocked the Grade down from B- to C. This is the pattern that most needs attention — a system that was working but has stalled.
Beyond your dashboard
What your rating communicates to others
Your dashboard isn’t just for you. It’s verifiable evidence of governance discipline — and every data point behind it is fully auditable.
For Boards
Independent verification that safeguarding governance is functioning. Not a report that says “we have policies” — evidence that those policies are being monitored, reviewed, discussed in meetings, and kept current.
For Insurers
Quantifiable risk management data that goes beyond self-attestation. A strong Grade signals that the organization is actively managing its safeguarding obligations across every dimension.
For Families
Transparent, understandable assurance that an organization takes child safety seriously — and can prove it with evidence, not just promises.