Keeping your child safe
Safeguarding at Central Primary School
Our school is committed to safeguarding. Safeguarding means keeping your child happy, healthy and safe in school or online. 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:
Our relationships and sex education policy and curriculum
- Attendance
- Behaviour Management
- Health and Safety
- Access to the Curriculum
- Anti- bullying
Safeguarding covers so much more. In Central we 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.
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 Social Services and/or other appropriate agencies.
Please remember that when the school refers a concern about a child to the Social Services Department, it is not accusing the parents of abuse but requesting that further investigation takes place to establish whether a child is at risk.
Please see the Child Protection and Safeguarding Policies.
Miss Sam Agan is our Designated Safeguarding Lead and 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 this school on a regular basis will be considered as a safeguarding matter.
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 affect the learning of others in the same class.
Mrs Robinson is our Attendance Administrator – please contact her on 01670 813111 if you would like to discuss any aspect of attendance including 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/RSE curriculum, core values, work with external agencies, charities and the local community.
We teach children about healthy relationships including relationships online.
Online safety
We have an e-safety team in place at Central who actively promote monitor e-safety. We also carry out an e-safety audit every year 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 called Senso Cloud and this is backed up by our own 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.
How we treat people fairly
We work with external partners such as the Stonewall Foundation to support its work on different areas of discrimination, such as homophobic bullying. Please see the Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Policy and our Anti Bullying Policy. The different parts of our curriculum work together to tackle discrimination.
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.
School sites
We work hard to ensure that our facilities are as safe as possible. The grounds are checked by the caretakers 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 lift are in perfect working order.
We carry out half termly fire alarm and evacuation tests and all of this is recorded in our Fire Log. A governor and members of the Leadership Team complete an annual Fire Audit and review the risk assessments and policy at the same time.
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.
The premises are accessible to pupils, parents and staff with disabilities.
We have worked with the Local Council on road safety initiatives and now have barriers, road markings and crossings to help pupils stay safe before and after school too.
The Health & Safety team includes a designated member of the Governing Body and meet regularly to discuss all matters of Health and Safety, Safeguarding and Security. The school complies with all national and local Health & Safety Regulations.
Photographs
We recognise that parents may wish to record events such as school plays, sports days etc. to celebrate their child’s achievements. However it is important that such records remain private and for family and personal use only. If you wish to put images online, and these images contain children who are not part of your family, you must first obtain the permission of parents or carers of the other children concerned. For further information about taking photographs in school and how the Data Protection Act does not apply to photographs or films being taken for personal use by family and friends please see our use of images policy