Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to provide additional training to teachers on child protection and safeguarding.

The Teachers’ Standards 2011 set out that teachers should safeguard children’s wellbeing as part of their professional duties.

All programmes of initial teacher training (ITT) must prepare teachers to demonstrate that they have met these Standards. The same Teachers’ Standards are also used to assess a newly qualified teacher's performance at the end of their induction period.

All trainee teachers are provided with the following at the commencement of their training in each school: the child protection policy, the staff behaviour policy (sometimes called a code of conduct), information about the role of the designated safeguarding lead and a copy of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), the Department’s statutory safeguarding guidance.

When a teacher starts work in a school, KCSIE sets out that they should receive child protection and safeguarding training at induction. This training should be regularly updated. Induction and training should be in line with advice from the Local Safeguarding Children Board.

The Department strengthened the guidance in September 2016 and it now sets out that in addition to training, teachers should receive regular safeguarding and child protection updates, as required, and at least annually.