In practice, no agency will place you and no school will accept you without a current safeguarding certificate. But it is worth understanding where that requirement actually comes from, because the answer is not quite what most providers say.
What changed in the 2026 edition
Previous editions of KCSiE included Annex A, a condensed version of Part One that schools could give to staff who did not work directly with children. The 2026 edition withdrew it. The summary of changes states that references to it have been removed because all staff are expected to read Part One in full.
For supply staff this removes an argument that used to get made: that a one-day placement justified a lighter version. It does not, and there is no longer a lighter version to give them.
What you are expected to know before you walk in
- The four categories of abuse and the indicators of each.
- What to do when a child discloses something, and what not to promise them.
- Who the designated safeguarding lead is in that building, and how to reach them today.
- That you report before you leave the site, not in an email the next morning.
- Online safety, including nudes and semi-nudes and child-on-child abuse.
- The Prevent duty and how a concern is referred.
- Safe working practice, and what a low-level concern about an adult is.
- Allergy awareness, which the July 2026 statutory guidance says should reach supply teachers too.
Whose job is it to train you?
Strictly, neither the agency nor the school has a legal duty to train an agency worker specifically. KCSiE places the training expectation on governing bodies and proprietors, and it is a should rather than a must. In reality the agency provides it, because the agency is the one that has to confirm under reg 19 of the Conduct Regulations 2003 that you have the training the school considers necessary, and because the school will ask for the certificate before it accepts the booking.
How often?
Every twelve months, in practice. That comes from APSCo Compliance+ requirement 26A and from what schools ask for, rather than from KCSiE, which asks for training at induction, regularly updated, with updates at least annually.
If you are a supply teacher reading this
What a school must do about you
Separately from training, the school has hard legal duties about you personally. It must obtain written notification from your agency that the same checks it would have carried out have been done, including confirmation that the enhanced DBS certificate was obtained, and it must record that on its single central record, even if you are there for one day. It should also check that the person who turned up is the person the checks were made on.