Shep Training

29/10/2026

💵 15% OFF 💵

In recognition of Halloween and Dia de Mu***os LOOK AGAIN! available in TES is 15% off.

My 12 years in Mexico gave me an appreciation of the celebrations held in Mexico where Day of the Dead/Dia de Mu***os is one of the biggest, and they also enjoy Halloween. A good excuse to dress up and party.

Fun facts:
👼 There is a special day for children and a special day for adults. Día de Mu***os is celebrated on 1st and 2nd November. Traditionally, 1st November is dedicated to children who have died (los angelitos), while 2nd November is for deceased adults. Families believe their loved ones return to visit during these days.

🏵️ It is a celebration, not a sad occasion. Rather than mourning, families celebrate the lives of those who have died. They create colourful ofrendas (altars) decorated with photographs, candles, marigolds (cempasúchil), favourite foods, drinks, and personal items to welcome their loved ones back for a visit.

💀 The famous skulls have a special meaning. The colourful skulls seen everywhere during Día de Mu***os are called calaveras. They remind people that death is a natural part of life and can be remembered with humour, affection, and joy rather than fear.

🎃 It is close to Halloween, but it is very different. Día de Mu***os takes place immediately after Halloween and shares some visual similarities such as costumes and skeletons. However, it is a distinct Mexican tradition with roots in ancient Indigenous beliefs combined with Catholic traditions. Its focus is on remembering and honouring family members who have died, not on ghosts or scares.

🎬 One of the most famous Día de Mu***os parades in Mexico City was inspired by the opening scene of the 2015 James Bond film Spectre. The huge parade shown in the movie was actually fictional. After millions of people saw it and expected such a parade to exist, Mexico City created a real annual Day of the Dead parade beginning in 2016.

🏛️ Bonus fact - UNESCO has recognised Día de Mu***os as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognising its importance to Mexican culture and identity.

LOOK AGAIN! is not another “spot the safeguarding concern” exercise.
Across 25 scenarios, participants encounter situations with varying levels of concern. New information may increase concern, decrease it, change its direction or leave important questions unanswered. The aim is not to diagnose abuse or harm, but to discuss what is noticed, known or assumed, and when to share information.

25/10/2026

What is coming next at Shep training? 🧐

Whilst exploring different approaches to training and after focusing on the LOOK AGAIN! Safeguarding resource, my next focus comes from this question:

What if, instead of starting with the problems schools face, we started by looking at the conditions that help school communities thrive?

It is something I have been thinking about since seeing a news report about Rushy Mead Academy on ITV Central News and now I am focusing my time on this.

Discussion around education understandably focuses on the challenges schools face. Staff wellbeing, pupil behaviour, attendance, workload, safeguarding and the pressures of meeting expectations. These are all important issues, but I am interested in looking at things from another direction.

What are the schools that are performing exceptionally well doing differently? Are there common approaches or conditions that help create a culture and environment where pupils and staff can thrive? Can these be extrapolated and applied generally?

With Ofsted's new inspection framework introducing an Exceptional judgement, and recent Department for Education research exploring pupils' sense of belonging, I am taking the opportunity to investigate these questions more closely.

I have started an independent comparative case study, looking at a varied selection of schools awarded Exceptional judgements alongside the recent DfE research on belonging.

I am interested in what the evidence could tell us, whether there are common themes across different educational settings, and what we might be able to learn from them.

I thought I would introduce what I've been exploring, as it's another direction my work with Shep Training has been taking.

I would be interested to hear from others working in education. When you think about schools where pupils and staff genuinely thrive, what do you think makes the biggest difference?

21/10/2026

Sometimes you just don't know what things will lead to.

What was originally supposed to be some simple online digital products, turned into a 3 month project putting together this 25 safeguarding scenario pack with accompanying facilitator guide to focus on building professional curiosity to enhance safeguarding training.
Although based within current UK guidelines, the pack is universal for any educational setting around the world wanting to enhance their safeguarding training opportunities.

Full pack and taster pack options available.
Full pack link: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/look-again-professional-curiosity-13601049

Taster pack link : https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/look-again-taster-pack-13613174

A scenario-based safeguarding CPD resource for developing professional curiosity, information-sharing and decision-making when the whole picture is not yet clear. LO

16/10/2026

LOOK AGAIN! is not another “spot the safeguarding concern” exercise.
Across 25 scenarios, participants encounter situations with varying levels of concern. New information may increase concern, decrease it, change its direction or leave important questions unanswered. The aim is not to diagnose abuse or harm, but to discuss what is noticed, known or assumed, and when to share information.

14/10/2026

Safeguarding scenario based training resource pack
25 scenarios, facilitator guidance.
Digital and printable versions.

Available on TES.

LOOK AGAIN! – Safeguarding Scenario Pack

Safeguarding concerns don't always present themselves clearly.

Sometimes it's a small observation, an incomplete piece of information or something that doesn't quite add up.

LOOK AGAIN! is a new safeguarding discussion resource from Shep Training, developed to help education staff practise responding to situations where the answers aren't immediately obvious.

The pack includes 25 progressive scenarios and accompanying facilitator guidance, designed to encourage professional curiosity, discussion and reflection.

Not every scenario leads to a safeguarding concern, and that's intentional.

The aim isn't to guess the correct answer, but to practise noticing, questioning assumptions and recognising when information needs to be recorded, shared or escalated.

Suitable for facilitated staff discussions, safeguarding refreshers and professional development in educational settings.

LOOK AGAIN! is now available.

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-13601049

10/10/2026

LOOK AGAIN! – Safeguarding Scenario Pack

Safeguarding concerns don't always present themselves clearly.

Sometimes it's a small observation, an incomplete piece of information or something that doesn't quite add up.

LOOK AGAIN! is a new safeguarding discussion resource from Shep Training, developed to help education staff practise responding to situations where the answers aren't immediately obvious.

The pack includes 25 progressive scenarios and accompanying facilitator guidance, designed to encourage professional curiosity, discussion and reflection.

Not every scenario leads to a safeguarding concern, and that's intentional.

The aim isn't to guess the correct answer, but to practise noticing, questioning assumptions and recognising when information needs to be recorded, shared or escalated.

Suitable for facilitated staff discussions, safeguarding refreshers and professional development in educational settings.

LOOK AGAIN! is now available.

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-13601049

10/10/2026

Does getting the right answer in safeguarding training mean participants are prepared for the real situation?

This is what I have been working towards over the last few months.

Safeguarding training provides important knowledge. It trains people to learn about different types of abuse, signs and indicators, responsibilities and procedures. But I've wanted to look beyond that, at knowledge which prepares people for situations where the answers aren't immediately obvious.

Scenarios where:
- someone notices something small that doesn't quite add up
- there is a perfectly reasonable explanation until something says there isn't
- different pieces of information of a concern changing the interpretation of what may have been seen
- everything points to a safeguarding concern and there isn't one at all
- different adults have perspectives, in various settings and the concerns increase, decrease, or have no change as the scenario progresses
- deep thinking, professional curiosity and discussion are promoted and encouraged

I think there's an important difference between being able to identify a concern when the information is presented to people and knowing how to respond when we're not entirely sure what were looking at.

It's that uncertainty I've wanted to focus on. Not encouraging people to investigate or reach their own conclusions and label the particular concern at play, but developing the professional curiosity to notice, question assumptions, consider what information they have and understand when something needs to be shared.

To achieve this I developed LOOK AGAIN!, a resource built around 25 safeguarding scenarios where the information doesn't always lead where participants might initially expect.

It is now published, which is quite a milestone for me after spending so long developing it. I'd genuinely be interested to hear other people's thoughts in the safeguarding community on this approach.

Is enough attention given in safeguarding training to practising how we think and respond when the situation isn't clear cut, rather than simply trying to identify what the exact form of abuse or harm is being portrayed?

08/10/2026

The "something I've been working on" is finally out in the world.

Over the past few months, I've been exploring how I can take Shep Training beyond traditional training courses and develop resources that support meaningful professional learning and my first resource is complete.

For this one, I focused on safeguarding, particularly the importance of professional curiosity.

In safeguarding, training is often about recognising signs of concern, diagnosing the form of abuse or harm and knowing how to respond.

But, as with real life, what happens when the signs aren't obvious? When information is incomplete, when different observations seem unrelated, or when new information changes how we understand a situation? What happens when there isn't a clear safeguarding concern at all, even though the signs suggest it?

LOOK AGAIN! – Safeguarding Through Professional Curiosity began as an idea for small, simple digital products related to safeguarding and it grew and developed into something much more substantial.

LOOK AGAIN! is a complete scenario-based professional development resource, containing 25 progressive-reveal scenarios, 50 illustrated cards, and a 131-page Facilitator Guide, alongside digital and printable versions of the cards.

It is not another spot the safeguarding concern exercise. It has been designed to encourage adults working in educational settings to be professionally curious to notice, connect information, question assumptions, consider uncertainty and discuss appropriate responses. Sometimes additional information increases concern.

Sometimes the concern reduces it or changes the direction of thinking. Sometimes questions remain unanswered. The aim isn't always to arrive at a neat answer. It is to develop the professional conversations and curiosity that matter when the whole picture isn't yet clear.

The resource can be used during staff CPD, safeguarding updates, INSET sessions or regular staff discussions. It doesn't replace formal safeguarding training, but can actively compliment it.

I am pleased to say that LOOK AGAIN! Pack 1 has now initially been published on TES.

It has been quite a journey from the original idea to a finished resource, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it is received and, hopefully, used to support conversations in schools.

A scenario-based safeguarding CPD resource for developing professional curiosity, information-sharing and decision-making when the whole picture is not yet clear. LO

20/09/2026

See Part 2 of the Shep Training: Beyond the Training story

20/09/2026

See part 3 of the Shep Training: Beyond the Training story.