Safeguarding in Education Training for School Staff

Different training providers produce slightly different safeguarding courses at each level, which means that there’s no standardised guidance on how often you need to receive refresher training for safeguarding. The general guidance is that training should be refreshed every 2 years, but as a practitioner, you may need to undertake more frequent or specialised training to be able to fulfil the requirements of your role.

Safeguarding in schools is essential for keeping children safe. It means having whole-school policies and procedures, staff and volunteers confident in identifying and raising concerns, leadership confident in responding to and referring concerns and working with other agencies to protect children. Examples of safeguarding issues include suspected abuse, bullying, sexual exploitation, radicalisation, grooming, allegations against staff, forced marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM).

When a child is in school, the school is responsible for keeping them safe from harm and abuse. The school should create a safe learning environment, identify pupils who are suffering or at risk of harm and take suitable action. Anyone that works closely with children needs to be aware of the laws regarding safeguarding and the steps to take if they suspect abuse or neglect. See more here.

There are many pieces of legislation and guidance that need to be known and understood if you are safeguarding children. Here we list and summarise the ones that are relevant to all UK countries. If you would like to know more about country-specific pieces, please select the relevant country: England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

To begin searching for your online training you can click on the course category section on our website and browse through all of our training categories.

Alternatively if you already know the title of the training you’re looking for you can use the search bar located in the centre of the homepage and go directly to the course you want.

When buying one of our courses, you will need to enter a valid email address which will be used to create your account with our Learning Management System – Enable – where you will take the training. We will also send your purchase receipt to this email address, and any additional courses purchased in future using the same email address will be added to your system account.

Once you have purchased a course, you will be able to send this course to other people using your system account with Enable by entering the new learner’s email address so that they may access the training and set up their own system account with our Learning Management System.

If you are not 100% satisfied with your course then we offer a 30-day, no hassle money-back guarantee. To request a refund, you should email our learner support team with your receipt stating why you would like to be reimbursed. You, or your learners, must not have completed the training in order to make a valid refund claim. Any claim made after the training has been completed will be invalidated.

This online course consists of a series of pages in which an instructor will talk learners through the lesson material. Pages may include supporting pictures, graphs, animation or extra sounds to help with the learning where appropriate. Some lessons will include challenges/quizzes to help learners stay engaged and interested in the material. Lessons can be taken in any order and each lesson may be paused and resumed at any stage.

The course is self-paced so learners decide how fast or slow the training goes. There is no deadline for completion but some of our courses have a test at the end to check that learners have understood the material. If the course has a test at the end then learners are required to achieve a 75% pass mark to successfully complete the course. Once learners have passed the test they are awarded a certificate, which can either be downloaded digitally or sent as a physical copy if this option was chosen when purchasing the course.

Upon completion of any of our courses, learners will be able to download a digital certificate from Virtual College which will include the accrediting bodies logo where applicable, the learner's name, the title of the course and the date of completion.

If you have purchased the posted certificate option, available on selected courses, a high quality, seal embossed, certificate will be sent out the following working week after completion.