Plymouth Governors’ Briefing No 21 in January 2013 offered this advice about Disclosure & Barring Service checks which have taken over from CRB Checks.
“Mark Grimley wrote to schools in June to confirm Plymouth City Council had taken the decision to cease its three year rolling programme of DBS checks. The issue of whether you decide to cease a rolling programme within your school is clearly a matter for both the head teacher and Governing Body.
If your school has decided to cease its rolling programme, an additional measure that can be used to promote safeguarding is the issue of an employee declaration to prompt the disclosure of any convictions, cautions, warnings or reprimands that may have arisen post appointment. Although this requirement is highlighted within ‘codes of conduct’ and in most school principal statements, a declaration provides an additional control measure which heightens the importance of disclosure. A draft declaration was attached to Mark’s letter which you may wish to adopt, and this can be issued (for example) on an annual or three yearly basis.
Where schools adopt self-declarations in place of a rolling renewals programme, the process will be managed directly by the school itself and the Council will not require details of when the self- declarations have been undertaken or the next date that they are due to be issued. We would advise that you add a further column to your Single Central Record to record the date that each self-declaration has been signed and completed. If you have any questions about this please contact Simon White, Safeguarding Manager on 307144.“