With a new academic year already under way for many, we asked Dan Furness, CIS Head of Safeguarding & Well-being, what school leaders should be thinking about now.

From leadership and governance to emerging online harms, student voice, safer recruitment, and contextual safeguarding, here are key priorities for the year ahead.

Image: Dan Furness, CIS Head of Safeguarding & Well-being talks to Kate Taverner from the CIS Communications Team

 

 

Kate: Dan, what aspects of safeguarding should schools be prepared for during this new school year?

Dan: It starts with leadership and governance.

The beginning of the school year is the ideal time to ensure safeguarding structures are in place, roles are clear, and safeguarding is understood as a whole-school responsibility. This does not sit with one individual or one team.

This is also a time of transition. New colleagues are coming in, others may have moved on, and this is the time to check that protective systems are ready.

This includes school-wide training, clear reporting pathways, and making sure new staff and students know who to go to if they have a safeguarding concern.

Strong safeguarding relies on a team approach. This is about empowering staff and utilising the skills and voices of the wider safeguarding team, in addition to your leadership team.

Think about your nurses, counsellors, boarding staff, pastoral and student support colleagues, and any others who work closely with students. Safeguarding is always stronger when multiple perspectives are involved.

The start of the new school year is also a good opportunity to review your policies and procedures. Are they still fit for purpose? Are they agile enough to respond to new concerns?

Online harms are changing year by year, sometimes month by month, so school communities need an approach that enables them to respond quickly and thoughtfully.

Kate: What should educators pay particular attention to this year?

Dan: I recommend these three areas to focus on: harm between students, online harms, and safer recruitment.

When we think about the harm students experience, we must remember that much of this happens between students.

We are seeing increasing intersections within this type of harm, online harm, identity-based harm, and sexually harmful behaviour. School leaders and teachers cannot simply respond and react; they need to think preventatively.

Online harms and abuse continue to evolve rapidly. Students return from breaks carrying their experiences from the online world, and those experiences are as real for them as anything else.

They may come back with concerns that affect their well-being or safety, and schools need to be aware of this and prepared to support them.

Safer recruitment remains equally important. Recruitment processes do not finish at the start of employment; the probation period is an important part of this process. Essential school practices include reviewing background checks, references, and any changes to local legal or data protection requirements that could affect recruitment.

These laws can change, so schools need to build this review into their wider safeguarding practice at the start of the year. And, for many schools the recruitment cycle will start again soon, so now is the time to prepare.

Kate: What opportunities can school leaders and teachers leverage at the start of the year?

Dan: One of the biggest opportunities is to learn from the perspectives of students.

Often educators learn about new forms of harm directly from students, so it is vitally important that student voice is at the centre of our preventive practices. Schools need to listen to students especially when they are developing curriculum and when they are looking at how to respond to new and ongoing concerns.

This is also a good time to refresh school structures. Do you need new students on the school council because others have left? How do you reinvigorate student voice, so it is meaningful and not tokenistic? Students can help schools understand what is relevant, where support is needed, and how safeguarding education can be improved.

Student voice should also shape the safeguarding curriculum. Some of this work may have been done at the end of last year, but some schools will be starting afresh, especially if there has been transition in key roles. The important thing to remember is that safeguarding learning is relevant to students and that they should have a role in helping to design it.

More broadly, safeguarding and well-being need to be embedded throughout school life. When well-being is effectively included in the curriculum, it becomes something you focus on all the time, not only for 20 minutes at the start of a Monday. Normalising conversation about well-being helps students to speak with adults they feel comfortable with. 

Kate: How should school communities think about safeguarding across different contexts and cultures?

Dan: Harm is universal, but safeguarding is contextual. Every school community is different.

Everyone needs to understand the culture of their community, the legal environment, and the specific risks their students may face. What types of harm are more prevalent in your context? Has this changed in the past year or so? What strengths already exist in your school culture, and what can you leverage?

This is especially important when welcoming new families. They may come from communities with different safeguarding structures and they may not have the same expectations.

Schools need to communicate clearly with newcomers, meet families where they are, and help them to understand the safeguarding culture of their new community.

The start of a new year is also an opportunity for safeguarding leaders and teams to identify their own assumptions and the biases they bring to this work. Every year is a new opportunity to review your personal perspective, seek feedback, and make sure you are mindful of how your assumptions might affect safeguarding decisions.

Kate: For educators who are looking to strengthen their safeguarding practice this year, where should they start?

Dan: One of the biggest challenges is knowing where to begin. This is why our Safeguarding & Child Protection Foundation Workshop was created.

It is often the first safeguarding workshop CIS members attend and is designed to provide a strong foundation in safeguarding and child protection within an international school context.

What is important in an international community is not to take or bring safeguarding practice from one country to another without adapting it to the new community. Schools operate within different legal, cultural, and community contexts, so our foundation workshop helps participants understand international safeguarding principles and how to apply them effectively in their own settings.

Another important realization is that this workshop is not only for safeguarding leads. It is valuable for school leaders, counsellors, pastoral and student support staff, boarding staff, and colleagues who want to deepen their understanding of inappropriate behaviours and how to address them.

Schools do this well when they have a core group of people with strong safeguarding foundational practices who can specialise in different areas and leverage different expertise.

Every adult in a school should receive safeguarding training, but not everyone needs the same level of training. Schools should prepare to deliver induction and ongoing training for staff annually, including reporting procedures, local requirements, signs of abuse, and school policies.

This training should not be a tick-box exercise. It works best when it reflects the school’s community, culture, and safeguarding priorities, and we are ready to support deeper professional learning when school communities need it.

 

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Related content:

• Are you at a CIS member School? Learn about the International Safeguarding Development Programme
• Learn about the International Taskforce on Child Protection
• Explore more CIS child protection resources & information
• View the full event schedule for CIS safeguarding workshops