New staff came back last week for induction, and returning staff join them this week as staff training gets underway for the new semester. Alongside the usual start of year buzz, welcoming new colleagues onto campus is one of the parts I look forward to most. Corridors are still quiet, classrooms are half set up, and there is a particular kind of energy that comes with a fresh start.

Safeguarding training sits early in that induction process, and for good reason. New staff need to understand not just the policies, but the culture and reasoning behind them. But it would be easy to think of safeguarding training as something mainly for those who are new. In reality, refreshers for existing staff matter just as much. Familiarity can quietly work against us. A policy read once, a system used for years, and it becomes easy to assume we already know what we need to know.

A moment to reflect, not just refresh

The start of the year offers something beyond induction and refresher training. It is also a natural point to step back and reflect on priorities for the safeguarding team as a whole. What worked well last year? Where did referral pathways feel clear, and where did they feel less so? Were there recurring themes in the concerns raised, and if so, what might that tell us about where attention is needed this year?

This kind of reflection can easily get lost once the term gains momentum. Taking time now, before the pace picks up, seems to make it more likely that priorities are chosen deliberately rather than inherited by default from the year before.

Benchmarking against best practice

Alongside internal reflection, the start of the year is also a sensible point to check our practice against external guidance. Keeping Children Safe in Education is updated annually, and international schools following British curriculum frameworks will often reference accreditation agencies (e.g. COBIS) guidance and updates as well. Reviewing what has changed, even where updates feel minor, may reveal small adjustments worth making to policy or practice. Not forgetting the key needs in our own school context.

This is not about treating guidance as a checklist to work through. It is more about using it as a point of comparison, a way of testing whether our own systems still reflect current thinking and expectations, rather than the thinking that shaped them when they were first written.

Top priorities for DSLs at the start of the year

From my own experience, a few things tend to be worth prioritising early in the year.

The first is simply knowing who is who. New students, new families, new staff, and any new external partners or contractors.

The second is revisiting referral pathways with fresh eyes. Systems that felt clear in July can feel less obvious in September, particularly for anyone new to the setting. Walking through the process, rather than assuming it is understood, seems worth the time.

The third is looking at any patterns or themes that emerged from the previous year. Not to dwell on individual cases, but to consider whether they point to something structural, a gap in training, a communication breakdown, or an area where earlier intervention might have helped.

The fourth is simply making time for supervision and reflective practice to be built into the calendar early, rather than something that gets arranged reactively once the term is already underway.

Building a shared culture, not just shared knowledge

Training alone does not build a safeguarding culture though. That culture shows up in the smaller moments afterwards, in staff feeling comfortable asking a question weeks later, and in safeguarding becoming part of daily conversation rather than something confined to a training session. That same culture extends to students, parents, the wider community, and contractors and activity providers on campus. Refresher training happens throughout the year, but constant ongoing monitoring, reminders, and intervention is what really matters.

A final reflection

Getting the start of year right, both in how we welcome new colleagues and in how we set priorities as a safeguarding team, may set the tone for how safeguarding is understood and practised for the rest of the year. A few hours of reflection, benchmarked against current guidance and grounded in what we learned last year, is certainly a worthwhile investment before the pace of term takes over.