Safeguarding at North Fawdon Primary School

This school is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.  Safeguarding means keeping your child happy, healthy and safe in school. All staff are trained at regular intervals and are aware of how to keep our pupils safe and what signs to look out for.  Our pupils are encouraged to share any concerns and we have robust policies and processes in place that underpin safeguarding.

Safeguarding the interests of each child is everyone’s responsibility and within the context of this school, promoting the welfare and life opportunities for your child includes:

Attendance

Behaviour Management

Health and Safety

Access to the Curriculum

Anti- bullying

Safeguarding covers so much more. In North Fawdon we try to take a holistic approach to safeguarding, not just preventing or dealing with harm but looking at the health and wellbeing, safety and security in every aspect of school life and beyond.

Our Designated Person(s) are:

   Emma Elliott   (Headteacher)

   Jen Faye           (Deputy Head Teacher)

   Maxine Pape   (SENDCO)

If you are concerned about a child’s welfare, please record your concern, and any observations or conversation heard, and report to one of the Designated Persons as soon as possible the same day. Do NOT conduct your own investigation.

If your concerns relate to the actions or behaviour of a member of staff (which could suggest that s/he is unsuitable to work with children) then you should report this to one of the Designated Persons in confidence, who will refer the matter to the Headteacher (or the Chair of Governors if the concern relates to the Headteacher) – who will consider what action to take.

Child Protection

In cases where the school has reason to be concerned that a child may be subject to ill- treatment, neglect or other forms of abuse, the Designated Safeguarding Lead may report this concern to Children’s Services and/or other appropriate agencies.

Please remember that when the school refers a concern about a child to Children’s Services, it is not accusing the parents of abuse but requesting that further investigation takes place to establish whether a child is at risk.

Jen Faye is our Designated Lead for Looked After Children.

Attendance

Please support us by ensuring that your child attends school regularly – this is a parents’ legal responsibility. Failing to attend school on a regular basis will be considered as a safeguarding matter.

Please see the attendance section of the website for further information.

Any absence affects the pattern of a child’s schooling and regular absence will seriously affect their learning. Any pupil’s absence disrupts teaching routines so may also affect the learning of others in the same class.

Please contact us if you would like to discuss any aspect of attendance or any concerns you may have.

What we teach

We offer a secure and encouraging environment where children feel safe and their spiritual, moral and cultural development is enhanced through the delivery of our whole school curriculum, including our PSHE/RE curriculum, core values, work with external agencies, charities and the local community.  Please see the curriculum section of this website for further information.

Online safety

We have an e-safety team in place at North Fawdon who actively promote and monitor e-safety.  We carry out an annual e-safety audit and this supports our comprehensive in-school policy.  All pupils, staff and visitors to school must read and sign our Acceptable Use Policy before any access to our systems is allowed. All usage is monitored by specialist software and this is backed up by a robust firewall and web filtering. Pupils are taught how to stay safe online and this is regularly reinforced in IT lessons and what to do or who they can talk to if they are worried.

Operation Encompass

North Fawdon Primary School takes part in Operation Encompass – This means that information from the police/social care regarding domestic incidents is shared with school. Therefore we can ensure that children are readily supported in school. 

The school leads for Operation Encompass are Mrs Elliott and Ms Faye.

Recruitment

We carefully check that all staff and volunteers are safe to work with our children. A number of checks are made including DBS checks, references, ID and employment history. We keep a single central record of all this information and this is regularly monitored.

Visitors and volunteers are rigorously checked in much the same way staff are before they can have any unsupervised access to our children. Any contractors on site have to read a safety briefing before being signed into the building. All adults in school wear an ID badge with a coloured lanyard for quick identification.

Photographs

We recognise that parents may wish to record events such as school plays, sports days etc. to celebrate their child’s achievements. Unfortunately, we do ask that parents do not take photographs/videos at school events as these images often include more than your own child.

We do however, endeavour where possible to provide opportunities for parents to take photographs of their own child after an event.

Please do not be too disappointed that our website does not contain lots of photographs of our children and staff – this is to protect their images from improper use.

School sites

We work hard to ensure that our facilities are as safe as possible. The grounds are checked by the caretaker every day and the building is maintained to the highest standards. External experts come regularly to check things like the firefighting equipment, water works and the security lights are in perfect working order.

The premises are accessible to pupils, parents and staff with disabilities.

We carry out regular fire alarm and evacuation tests and all of this is recorded in our Fire Log. An annual Fire Audit and risk assessments reviews are carried out regularly.

Our catering facilities meet the highest standards of hygiene and they are checked regularly by officers from NCC. We also meet the nutritional standards in place nationally and we are careful about the food of all pupils with allergies.

We have worked closely with the Local Council on road safety initiatives to help pupils stay safe before and after school too.

The Health & Safety team includes a member of the Governing Body and meet to discuss all matters of Health and Safety, Safeguarding and Security, the school complies with all national and local Health & Safety Regulations.