On the 1st of September 2020 the new Department of Education’s Keeping Children Safe in Education came into force. The new guide contains several changes of which some directly impacts teaching agencies and supply staff for the first time.

Below is a highlight of the changes.

Safeguarding information has been widened to explicitly include supply staff and volunteers

Concerns about safeguarding or if an allegation is made about another member of staff will explicitly include supply staff and volunteers. Any concerns should be referred to the headteacher or principal.  Should the concern/allegation be about the headteacher or principal, this should be referred to the chair of governors, chair of the management committee or proprietor of an independent school; and in the event of concerns/allegations about the headteacher, where the headteacher is also the sole proprietor of an independent school, this should be reported directly to the designated officer(s) at the local authority.

The guidance has also made it clear that both mental and physical health are relevant to the safeguarding and the welfare of children.

Information on mental health has been updated to help staff make the link between mental health concerns and safeguarding issues.

The NSPCC has updated their ‘when to call the police guidance’ which is also included in the guidance.

Allegations made against teachers, and other staff, including supply teachers and volunteers

Allegations of abuse made against any member of school staff is the school’s responsibility to manage where the school is the employer. Further clarification has been noted in this guidance where allegations are made against supply teachers and volunteers where the school is not the direct employer (i.e. when the agency is the employer) the school must ensure the allegations are dealt with properly.

The guidance makes it clear that schools hold a responsibility to fully explore concerns about supply staff and in those instances, schools cannot simply cease to use the supply teacher. Processes should be developed to manage this and the school should advise agencies of its process for managing allegations. Agencies are required to be fully involved and co-operate with any enquiries from the local authority designated officer (LADO), police and/or children’s social services. Governing bodies and proprietors should discuss with the agency whether it is appropriate to suspend the supply teacher, or redeploy them to another part of the school, whilst they carry out their investigation. 

Our governing body the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) welcomes the inclusion of supply staff on how schools should handle abuse and allegations made against them. This is something the REC has been requesting for some time.

An additional point has been added under behaviours which poses a transferable risk from the way an individual has behaved or may have behaved in a way that indicates they may not be suitable to work with children. For example, a member of staff is involved in domestic violence at home. No children were involved, but schools need to consider what trigged these actions and could a child in the school trigger the same reaction, therefore being put at risk.

Information added about the Coronavirus pandemic

During the coronavirus outbreak the DFE issued a non-statutory interim guidance. This has now been removed as the governments expects all educational settings across the nation to reopen for new academic year in September 2020.

Click here to view and download the full Keeping Children Safe in Education (Sept 2020).

For the latest information from the Department of Education, click www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education

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England’s schools are facing its major challenge in recruiting and retaining teachers and senior leaders, MPS from the Education Select Committee have warned. Key subject areas such as Maths, Physics and Computing were the hardest hit. For the fifth year in a row the government has failed to deal with the problem resulting in missing recruitment targets. In a highly critical new report by the education select committee it calls for urgent action, including more focus on retaining teachers once they are in the classroom. It was revealed a third of teachers who began teaching in 2015 quit the profession within the first five years. One of the suggestions put forward is capping on the number of hours teachers work as high workload was one of reasons why so many are leaving the profession.    

MPs have pointed out while ministers have recognised there are issues, there is no long-term plan to address the recruitment crisis. They suggest there should be greater efforts to keep teachers from leaving the profession and moving to other jobs. It is more cost effective than recruiting new teachers and would strengthen the pool of future leadership candidates. Workload is not the only reason teachers are leaving the profession. It is a combination of factors including constant curriculum and policy changes, pay cuts, lack of support and finally government pressure which then led to poor health and feeling undervalued. In order to raise the status of the teaching profession, and improve retention, teachers must be entitled to high-quality, relevant continuing professional development throughout their careers. This must include a focus on subject-specific knowledge and skills to allow teachers to continually develop their practice and to create future leaders.  

Teaching is becoming a young person’s game
Pupils are in danger of losing valuable, highly experienced teachers as schools begin to recruit more and more NQTs over older teachers. Schools are reluctant to employ experienced teachers because they have to pay higher salaries compared to NQTs. Even though there are many excellent NQTs, pupils often end-up losing out through inexperienced teachers. Many have great skills but will lack the knowledge and competence that comes only with years of teaching.  

The concern here is teaching is beginning to be seen as something you can really do when you are free of life’s other commitments – not surprising based on the current demands of the role. Many teachers work late into the evening and weekend working has become the norm. Young, energetic teachers with fresh ideas are highly welcomed in schools however they need guidance, support and advice which only comes from those who have devoted ten plus years in the classroom, taught hundreds of children, encountered all abilities of learning and have learnt from endless mistakes. With no one there to mentor the new generation of teachers it’s no surprise that NQTs are not lasting in the profession. Being in the middle of a recruitment and retention crisis schools do not have the luxury to be a young domain and the highly experienced older teachers are a luxury to them.  

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said "This report should act as a wake-up call to ministers that falling back on sticking plaster solutions such as the failed National Teaching Service will do nothing to address the systemic causes of the teacher supply crisis." A Department for Education spokesman said “There are more teachers in England’s schools than ever before with secondary postgraduate recruitment at it’s highest since 2011." He said more than £1.3 billion would be invested in recruitment over this parliament, and that more trainees in physics and maths were recruited this year than last year. “The secretary of state has set out her ambition to continue driving up standards through investment in professional development so the best teachers stay in the profession,” he added. Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said the government was "failing to deliver on its most basic of tasks." "Recruitment targets are being missed, school budgets are being cut for the first time in decades and we have thousands more unqualified teachers teaching in our schools," she said, adding that "children deserve better."  

MPs have argued the government has failed to provide sufficient evidence to show opening new grammar schools would improve social mobility and the quality of education for all pupils.

The Department for Education (DfE) has argued that removing the ban on opening new grammars will be a way of making "more good school places available, to more parents, in more parts of the country". The cross-party committee of MPs, responding to the evidence gathered about plans to increase selective education, said ministers still needed to demonstrate how this would improve social mobility and close the gap between rich and poor pupils. Since Theresa May announced her plans to lift the ban on new grammars brought in under Tony Blair’s government there has not been any details on how this might be implemented.    

Last week the Grammar School Heads’ Association published details of a private meeting with education ministers. The document suggests that new grammar schools could open from 2020 and in the meantime there would £150m allocated to expand existing grammars or to introduce grammar steams through academy trusts. There was also a suggestion that these new grammars would be much more selective than traditional grammars, with places for the top 10% of the ability range. Another idea was that there would be a single national entry test for grammars, rather than a range of local tests, with the aim of designing an exam that would be more resistant to coaching by private tutors. 

A DfE spokeswoman said that grammar schools have a "track record of closing the attainment gap to almost zero between children on free school meals and their better off classmates." The spokeswoman said that "99% of grammar schools are rated good or outstanding; and even when you take higher ability intakes into account pupils still perform better in selective schools than in non-selective schools." Labour's shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said: "When even the Conservative-dominated education select committee calls Theresa May's new grammar schools an 'unnecessary distraction', it's time that ministers finally sat up and took notice.” "There is a crisis in teacher recruitment, schools budgets are being cut for the first time in decades and hundreds of thousands of pupils are in super-sized classes.

The Tories should be keeping their pledge to protect school funding rather than pressing ahead with this policy," she said. John Pugh, the Liberal Democrats' education spokesman, said: "Instead of ploughing ahead with these divisive plans, Theresa May should address the £3bn funding black hole facing our schools over the next five years." Sir Peter Lampl, founder of the Sutton Trust, backed the calls for the government to show evidence that new grammars could close the attainment gap - when less than 3% of grammar school entrants are eligible for free school meals. "Until existing grammar schools demonstrate they can be vehicles for social mobility, the number of grammar schools should not be increased," said Sir Peter. Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the report showed the government had lost the argument on grammar schools and called for a rethink of the policy. “To focus on schools that ignore 90% of the population is a massive distraction. To pour millions of pounds into this system when state school budgets are at breaking point is a terrible use of public funds. No other high-performing education system in the world uses selection at 11. It is too late to counter disadvantage. The government would do better to invest more in early years education, where the evidence shows you can make more of an impact on a child’s future prospects.” “There is strong evidence that selection at 11 damages outcomes overall. There is no support for this from school leaders; the plans to expand selection should be rethought entirely.”  

The key to raising school standards is to ensure a high level of teaching is being delivered consistently and effectively. In order to achieve this the Department of Education (DfE) has said it is vital for all teachers to receive the necessary training, however the Teacher Development Trust have highlighted there are 20,000 teachers in schools across England who have no budget to train them.

David Weston, chief executive of the Teacher Development Trust, said the findings were "extremely concerning." The study reports 600 schools have simply had to remove their budget for professional development due to lack of funds. Rising costs and cuts in budgets has meant head teachers are having to juggle where money is being spent.  

The news could not have come at a worse time when the teachers leaving the profession is shamefully increasing year on year. "It is shockingly short-sighted for schools to be slashing these budgets at a time when there is more pressure than ever on recruiting and keeping staff," said Mr Weston. "We work with schools who have invested in this area and seen huge improvements in pupil results and teacher recruitment." He said that investment in professional training should remain a priority and that pupils deserved to be taught by teachers with up-to-date skills. The report found lower-achieving schools were less likely to spend money on training than those which were more performing better. Primary schools spent 0.65% of their budget on staff training while Secondary schools spent much less, 0.37% of their budget. Rising costs and budget cuts means leaves schools with a constant struggle in getting the right balance

Professor Robert Coe, director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring at Durham University said funding levels for training were "pitifully low."

"Research evidence is very clear that investing in high-quality support for teachers' professional learning is not just one of the most effective things schools can do to raise standards, but one of the best-value choices they can make.” "Cutting spending on CPD, even in a time of tight budgets, would be one of the most counter productive, short-sighted and evidence-averse things a school could do." The deputy head of Quintin Kynaston school in north London, Ross McGill, said it was wrong for schools to be "squeezed into a corner, forced to make a decision to cut, or have no continuous professional development budget available to their staff." He said that the staff development budget was "always the first thing to be cut when unplanned financial circumstances arise throughout the academic year." "With rapid reforms in curriculum, examinations and assessment, every school will need to invest a huge amount of time for all staff to be one step ahead of their students in class," he said.

A DfE spokesman said: "Continued professional development is vital for all teachers to help improve their knowledge and skills.” "Thanks to our investment in school funding, which at more than £40bn in 2016-17 is at its highest level on record, we are giving all schools access to the resources they need.” "We trust heads to make the right decisions for their staff and use those resources to invest in high quality training and development."