Safeguarding is a central element to everything we do at Sedlescombe Church of England Primary School. The key statutory guidance ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ explains what safeguarding is:
- protecting children from maltreatment;
- preventing impairment of children’s health or development;
- ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care;
- and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.
Child Protection is one element of Safeguarding and our Child Protection Policy can be downloaded from the link on this page. However, Safeguarding encompasses more than just recognising and identifying children at risk from harm and taking action to prevent this. Safeguarding has many other elements:
- Safer Recruitment – ensuring that everyone working in our school is qualified and safe to do so
- Safer Premisies – this includes ensuring our school site is secure and safe and that children can be collected and dropped off at school safely
- Online safety – ensuring that children and parents know how to keep children safe online
- Risk Assessment – and school trips are risk assessed to minimise risk and keep children safe
- Curriculum – ensuring that we have a broad and balanced curriculum with activities that are fun and engaging, but safe
- Partnership working – working with other agencies to share information
- Attendance – ensuring that children have good education, all absences from school are accounted for and ensuring no children are missing from education.
We work hard to ensure that we meet all of these requirements so that all of the children attending Sedlescombe Church of England Primary School are safe, happy and prevented from harm. More details about our policies and procedures can be found in the Policies section.
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP)
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) aims to keep children and young people safe from sexual abuse and grooming online.
Parents, carers and children can report a concern about child sexual abuse or online exploitation to the CEOP Safety Centre.
CEOP helps any child or young person under the age of 18 who is being pressured, forced or tricked into taking part in sexual activity of any kind. This can be something that has taken place either online or in ‘the real world’, or both. The CEOP Safety Centre has clear information and advice on what can be reported to CEOP, the reporting process and what will happen if you do decide to make a report. You can visit the CEOP Safety Centre and make a report directly to CEOP by clicking the Click CEOP button.
If you are experiencing online bullying or something else online has worried you please speak to an adult you trust, or you can talk to Childline at any time on 0800 1111 or at http://www.childline.org.uk.
Information for Parents
The PANTS Rule
With the help of the NSPCC friendly dinosaur Pantosaurus, talking PANTS is a simple way to teach your child how to stay safe from abuse. You’ve probably already talked to your child about things like crossing the road safely. Talking to them about staying safe from sexual abuse is just as easy with the NSPCC PANTS rules. With their singing dinosaur video you can help your child to learn the key messages without using any scary words.
P = Privates are private
A = Always remember your body belongs to you
N = No means no
T = Talk about secrets that upset you
S = Speak up, someone can help
On-Line Safety Information Parents
We recognise that as parents it is really hard to keep up to date with developments in on-line gaming and internet sites and apps that children are using. Please find below some useful parent information guides produced by the National Online Safety Organisation to ensure that parents have the information they need to support their children in staying safe whilst online. The ones most relevant to our parents have been downloaded and can be accessed by clicking on the links. Alternatively you can visit the website yourself from the link at the bottom of the page.
7 Conversation Starters for Parents
Age Ratings Guide for Parents
FIFA Parent Guide
Fortnite Guide for Parents
Grand Theft Auto Parent Guide
Minecraft Guide for Parents
Instagram Parent Guide
Roblox Parent Guide
Snapchat Parent Guide
TikTok Parent Guide
WhatsApp Parent Guide
Youtube Parent Guide
What Children Need to Know About Online Bullying
Social Media Likes Pressure
National Online Safety Platform Guides
Online Safety Survey March 2022
Thank you to everyone who participated in our most recent survey. Responses showed, overwhelmingly, that parents/carers felt they needed more information around Online Safety. Below is a powerpoint detailing what we do as a school and some handy hints to support online safety learning at home. Links to online safety training will also be sent home via Newsletters.