This week I attended an online training session on safeguarding, something which is included as part of my membership of The Tutors’ Association. The session is by no means the only way in which I keep my knowledge and awareness of safeguarding and child protection up to date, but it is one of the many things I choose to do to stay informed. I say “choose,” because tutoring remains an unregulated industry and — contrary to what many parents may assume — there are currently no legal protections in place to safeguard minors or their families when it comes to private tuition.
Last year, the BBC reported that more than 90 private tutors working in the UK have been previously convicted of sexual offences involving children within the past 20 years. This is frankly horrifying. The children’s commissioner for England called for reform in light of the findings, but currently there is still no legal requirement for people offering private lessons to undergo any kind of criminal record check before working with children and young people; there are also no guidelines about training for tutors when it comes to safeguarding (or indeed anything else).
While I labour under no illusions that teacher training is the be-all and end-all when it comes to education, indeed I would rate my own PGCE from St John’s College, Cambridge as one of the most woefully inadequate and borderline useless qualifications I have to my name, at least that process required some formal training in safeguarding. Beyond that, if a tutor is a qualified teacher with experience in schools (and by the way, those two things are not the same thing at all!) then they will have been put through mandatory safeguarding training on a regular basis, in accordance with the law. For this reason more than any other, I would personally be rigorously frisking any tutor who has no longterm experience in classroom teaching as part of their background for evidence that they are alert to and aware of the meaning and importance of safeguarding. People should be particularly aware that there are plenty of tutors who advertise the fact that they have a teaching qualification, but in fact they spent no time in the classroom beyond their training year. From a safeguarding perspective, this will mean that they are very inexperienced and will not have done much training in this area.
The current lack of regulation means not only that many tutors do not bother to secure a DBS check for themselves (the process is actually not as easy as you might think, and requires you to be attached to a recognised organisation who will process it for you), but perhaps even more concerningly many of them do not have experience of any training in safeguarding. A simple browse through online discussions between tutors reveals a plethora of would-be professionals claiming that membership of a professional organisation is “not worth it” and that securing a DBS is “not necessary, because parents don’t ask.” As for training, it doesn’t seem to occur to any of them that it might be important or useful for them.
My own role in schools was broadly that of a classroom teacher with the occasional bit of further responsibility thrown in, and I climbed no further up the pastoral ladder than the role of form tutor. Despite this, I always took the safeguarding aspects of my job extremely seriously. Not only did I follow and absorb all training to the letter, I used to (and still do) read the relevant serious case reviews published by the government; they are now archived by the NSPCC. Such reviews are, in my opinion, important for ordinary members of any workforce who come into contact with children, as they often highlight individual and institutional failings that everyone should be aware of. Despite this, I have never met anyone else in my profession who reads them, except people who have to do so as a part of their job description (Designated Safeguarding Leads).
The training I attended this week was good and I said so. Let’s be honest, I am notoriously difficult to please, being one of those teachers that has sat through so many shockingly poor in-service training sessions that I have become what I am more than prepared to admit is hyper-cynical. I’m deeply intolerant of any kind of flannel and even less tolerant of what I like to call institutional back-patting, when everyone sits around and tells each other what a terrific job they’re doing. I see this a lot in tutoring: it’s usually dressed up as “this is a positive/safe space” but really it amounts to nothing more than ridiculous complacency arising from a lack of challenge, which is not good for any professional in my humble opinion. But The Tutors’ Association have done a good thing in appointing Holly Goodwin as their Designated Safeguarding Lead and indeed it is testament to the vastly improved professional approach of the new regime in the Association that it has appointed a DSL in the first place. Holly has experience as a DSL in schools in both the state and the independent sector. She now works as a consultant and trainer in schools, universities, children’s homes, hospices and charities, helping organisations to build safer environments for children and vulnerable adults. So, she’s a great appointment, and it is really good to know that I can contact her for advice.
One of the things I miss most about being in a school is being able share my low-level hunches in an appropriate way. People without experience in this area often imagine that safeguarding is high-drama revelations and interventions, and of course, sometimes such things happen. Most of the time, however, the process is all about the little tiny things, the things that seem like nothing in isolation. As a tutor, if I notice something small like a child being consistently tired, or I note that the father seems somewhat domineering, I cannot do anything with such an observation. As a classroom teacher, I would have shared my thoughts on the confidential system. My school, like many, used CPOMs, a software system designed to streamline safeguarding concerns within institutions. We were actively encouraged to log even the most insignificant of observations, because they might form part of a wider picture. In an ideal world, when safeguarding training is really effective, every teacher is proactively using the system on a regular basis; as a result, for some children, a picture starts to form from all the little tiny raised flags, something which might start to indicate a bigger cause for concern. Thus, while an individual observation such as “Dad seems a bit domineering” would never warrant any kind of intervention on its own (it is not illegal to be an unpleasant man), it might one day be relevant to a bigger picture that does indeed lead to further investigation. I don’t have access to anything like this now, and I really miss it.
UK schools are among the most important places for children’s safeguarding because they serve as a central, consistent and regulated environment where children spend a significant portion of their time. Teachers and other school staff see children daily, allowing them to observe patterns of behaviour, appearance, and emotional wellbeing. Because of this routine contact, schools are often the first place where signs of concern are noticed. I really do miss being part of this schema and am alert to the fact that private tutoring puts individuals like me in a rather different position from a regular teacher, who is a part of something bigger.
