Do Interim School Leaders Need Their Own Safeguarding Training?

A practical guide for proprietors, boards and the interim leaders they appoint

This question usually arrives late, sometimes after an interim has already started. The person has a folder of certificates, they’ve worked in schools for twenty years, and everyone assumes that side of things is covered.

It’s an understandable assumption, and it’s the reason we find gaps here more often than almost anywhere else in a leadership handover. Many proprietors tell us they’d not thought about it because an interim felt different from a new employee, and a provider had said the person was fully vetted.

Vetted and trained are two different things, and both matter.

What safeguarding training does an interim leader need?

The same as any other member of staff at that level, and it isn’t reduced because the placement is temporary.

That means current safeguarding and child protection training appropriate to their role, an understanding of your school’s own procedures, and, where they’re taking the designated safeguarding lead role, current DSL training specifically.

The standard applies to the person, not the length of their contract. A child doesn’t have a lesser entitlement because the adult leading their school is there for two terms.

Alongside training sits the vetting: enhanced DBS with barred list check, prohibition checks, identity, right to work, references, and recording on the single central record. That’s safer recruitment rather than training, and it’s the other half of the answer.

Does existing training transfer between schools?

Partly, and being clear about which parts is what makes this manageable.

Generic safeguarding knowledge transfers. Someone who completed substantial training last term understands the statutory framework, the categories of abuse, thresholds and referral principles, and none of that changes when they walk into a different building.

What doesn’t transfer is everything that’s specific to your setting. Your reporting procedures. Your recording system and how to use it. Who your DSL and deputies are. Your local authority’s thresholds and referral routes, which vary considerably between areas. Your low level concerns process, and any safeguarding supervision arrangements. Your particular risks, which in a specialist setting might include physical intervention protocols, intimate care arrangements, medication procedures or exploitation risks relevant to your cohort.

So the honest answer is that an experienced interim usually doesn’t need general safeguarding training on day one, and always needs a proper induction into how safeguarding works here.

Day one, before pupils arrive

A workable induction covers eight things and takes about an hour.

• Who the DSL and deputy DSLs are, and how to reach them
• How to report a concern about a child, in practice, with the system open in front of them
• How to report a concern about an adult, and where low level concerns are recorded
• Which local authority you refer to, and the threshold and contact arrangements
• What’s currently open, including anything with the LADO
• Your specific risks and any protocols attached to them
• Where the safeguarding policy, behaviour policy and any relevant risk assessments are
• Who to contact out of hours, and in a residential setting, what the on call arrangement is

Record that this happened. An induction that took place but wasn’t recorded is, for evidential purposes, an induction that didn’t.

Where the interim becomes the designated safeguarding lead

This is where the requirement becomes more specific, and where gaps most often appear.

DSL training isn’t the same as general safeguarding training. It’s a distinct role with distinct responsibilities, and someone taking it needs current training for it rather than for safeguarding generally.

Two situations cause difficulty. The first is an interim who has been a headteacher for years but has never personally held the DSL role, because they always had a deputy who did. Their general knowledge is strong and they’ve never had DSL training. The second is a school where the departing head held it, the deputy is named as the replacement, and nobody has told them or trained them.

In both cases the answer is the same: arrange the training now, and in the meantime make sure someone with current DSL training is available to the person holding the role. This is a week one action, not a term one action.

Who is responsible for arranging it?

You are, as the school. That doesn’t change because the person came through a provider.

A good provider will hold checks, verify certificates and be able to tell you exactly what the person has. That’s genuinely useful and it speeds things up. What it doesn’t do is transfer your responsibility to satisfy yourself that the person leading your school is safe to do so.

Agree in writing at the outset which checks the provider holds and which you’ll verify yourself. Assuming the other party has done it is precisely how gaps happen, and it’s the explanation we hear most often when we find one.

The interim has a role here too. An experienced leader should be asking for the induction rather than waiting for it, and should be checking they’re on the single central record. If they’ve been in post a fortnight and nobody has mentioned safeguarding procedures, that’s a finding about the school and it belongs in their report to the board.

From our experience

The gap we find most often isn’t training. It’s induction.

An experienced interim arrives with excellent credentials, everybody assumes they know what they’re doing, and three weeks later they discover the school’s recording system works differently from any they’ve used and they’ve been logging things in the wrong place.

Many leaders tell us they were never formally inducted into safeguarding at a placement. They picked it up, as capable people do, and it worked out. That’s not a system, and it doesn’t hold when something goes wrong at week two.

An independent safeguarding audit picks these gaps up quickly. We often see the single central record gap too, and it’s almost always the same story. Everyone assumed the provider had it covered, or that an interim didn’t need to be on it. Both assumptions are wrong and both are easy to fix on day one.

A common misconception

“They’re an experienced headteacher, so safeguarding is obviously covered.”

Experience is genuinely valuable and it isn’t the same as being inducted into your school.

The most experienced leader in the country still doesn’t know your reporting routes, your local authority’s thresholds, which children currently have open cases, or where your low level concerns are recorded. Those are the things that matter at half past two on a Tuesday when a child says something to a teaching assistant.

An hour of proper induction on day one gives an experienced leader everything they need. Skipping it because they’re experienced is how a capable person ends up making a mistake that wasn’t theirs to make, and the children in your school are the ones who carry the risk of it.

Questions for proprietors and boards

• Have we seen the interim’s safeguarding training certificates ourselves?
• Did they receive a recorded safeguarding induction before meeting pupils?
• If they hold the DSL role, do they have current DSL training specifically?
• Are they on our single central record with a full set of checks?
• Do we know exactly which checks the provider holds and which are ours?

Our perspective

This is one of the easiest things to get right and one of the most commonly missed, which is an unusual combination.

Ask for certificates before the start date. Give a recorded induction on day one. Arrange DSL training immediately where it’s needed. Put the interim on the single central record like anyone else. Agree with your provider who holds what.

None of it takes long, and it means the person leading your school is properly equipped from their first morning rather than assembling it as they go. That’s what every child in the building is entitled to, whoever happens to be in the headteacher’s office that term.