Hullavington CE Primary and Nursery School

At Hullavington CE Primary and Nursery School we want to make sure that children are given the best chances to thrive and get optimum life opportunities. We also need to ensure they are protected from neglect or abuse.

We would like to share with you here some school policies and practices that children are taught in order to live healthy lifestyles and to encourage them to keep themselves safe.

School policies are in place to ensure that there is a consistent approach to keeping children safe and healthy throughout the school. Adults have a tremendous impact on young children and with this in mind adults at Hullavington CE Primary and Nursery School:

•             promote a happy, caring and safe school

•             are conscientious and hard-working

•             work within agreed policies of the school

•             encourage children to think for themselves, ask questions and find answers

•             create an environment of trust whereby children feel secure

•             challenge and support children in their learning

•             work closely with other agencies such as education psychologists, the Learning support Team, the Behaviour Support team, Social Services, school nurses and paediatricians.

The safeguarding team at Hullavington consists of Lynsey McGinn as Designated Safeguarding Lead, Matthew Slinn and Jacqui Trubee as Deputy Safeguarding Designated Lead and Lizzy Pearce as Safeguarding Governor. We have specialist staff such as Rob South our SENCo, our ELSA trained Teaching Assistants, staff with many specialisms as well as Terry Jones, our parent support worker.

There are numerous policies in place to safeguard the children that can be found on our website. Hard copies are available upon request. They include:

Child Protection – this is sensitive area in which all staff receive annual training. School and other services for children and families all work together to support the needs of children. Our safeguarding policy which includes child protection can be viewed by parents on the school website. Hard copies are available on request.  A particular aspect of child protection involves the internet and e-safety. We make sure our pupils do not access unsuitable material on our computers and tablets. Please ensure you have the necessary security and parental blocks on your devices at home. As part of our safeguarding training all staff are trained to identify child sexual exploitation including online exploitation. We need to ask ourselves as parents, `Do we know who our children are talking to online? Would our children tell us about a `new’ person who suddenly starts communicating with them? How often do we check the devices they are using?’  Also please be mindful about the age rating on films and games as the rating is there for a reason.

Attendance – children’s attendance at school is monitored on a daily basis and absences are followed up. If absences cause concern, some cases will be referred to the Educational Welfare Officer.

Behaviour – high standards of behaviour are expected both in school and out of school. However, as we all know children do fall out from time to time. Where this is the case we ensure the incident is dealt with sensitively by an adult who gives both children time to explain what the problem is and who then helps the issue to be resolved. Children are often reminded about our school rules and they know that we have them in order for everyone to be happy and keep safe.

Health and safety - everyone here at Hullavington CE Primary and Nursery School  knows they have a responsibility to ensure children and adults are able to work in a healthy and safe environment. The school has several fully trained paediatric first aid members of staff who deal with accidents should they occur.

Curriculum – through the planned curriculum we ensure that the issues of healthy eating, physical exercise and safety are taught. This aspect is enhanced by the many visitors to school, e.g. police officers who talk to the children about issues such as e-safety, the road safety team, the Junior Good Citizenship initiative for Year 6 pupils, the Life Education Bus.  In terms of healthy eating we have found recently that more children are having chocolate and/or sweets in their lunchboxes.  We are a `Healthy Schools Silver’ school and promote healthy options at lunchtime. Indeed in our successful re-validation report for the Inclusion Report in July 2015 the assessor commented, `Children bringing packed lunches usually have sandwiches included, but there is also more unhealthy food in lunch boxes than is ideal, with crisps and other fatty and salty snacks, sweet drinks and chocolate bars all seen on the day of the IQM visit.’  We know this is a small percentage of pupils but please can all parents ensure that lunchboxes contain healthy foods – no chocolate bars and/or sweets.

Staff recruitment and selection –Governors and the school ensure that all staff new to the school and volunteers who work in school on a regular basis undertake a DBS check and full references are acquired before the person takes up post.

We all know that children thrive better and are able to reach their full potential when school and families work closely together. All of us here at Hullavington CE Primary and Nursery are totally committed to this.  If you have any questions about anything raised in this section then please feel free to contact me.

Please click on the links below to see our safeguarding documentation, information about first aid and information on online safety.