Safeguarding

‘This school is committed to safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of all children, and expects our staff, volunteers and visitors to share this commitment’

As a result of our vision ‘Living and Learning in the Light of God,’ safety and dignity are recognised as essential precursors to learning and flourishing. Ensuring the basic principle of respect for the value and preciousness of each person and treating everyone as a unique individual of inherent worth is understood and embraced by all.

It is the school’s highest priority to work with parents and outside agencies to ensure all children remain safe at all times. Safeguarding covers a whole range of areas including the safe management of visitors in school, the management of risk taking in school activities, the safe management of trips and visits and strong and secure child protection procedures. Most recently it also includes ensuring school has given due consideration to the implementation of national priorities such as the ‘Prevent’ agenda (prevention from risk of radicalisation) and other national issues such as Female Genital mutilation (FGM) and Child Sexual exploitation (CSE).

As a team we work collectively to ensure effective safeguarding procedures work well.  There are three key personnel leading this:

• The Designated Senior Lead for child protection: Mrs Katie Barnett, Headteacher.
• The Deputy Designated Senior Lead for child protection: Mr Simon Hesketh, Deputy Headteacher
• The Safeguarding Governor: Mrs Rebecca Marsden

We are committed to working with parents positively, openly and honestly. We ensure that all parents are treated with respect, dignity and courtesy. We respect parents’ rights to privacy and confidentiality and will not share sensitive information unless we have permission or it is necessary to do so in order to protect a child.

School will share with parents any concerns we may have about their child unless to do so may place a child at risk of harm.

We encourage parents to discuss any concerns they may have with their child’s class teacher or senior child protection lead (see above for named persons).

We have numerous Safeguarding Policies for our school. These can be found on our policies page.

All new parents are made aware of our child protection policies and procedures via the school newsletter and new starter pack.

In May 2024, we received a full safeguarding audit of our school by the Leeds City Council Education Safeguarding Team (a requirement for Leeds schools at least every 5 years.) The day long visit included scrutiny of a range of paperwork as well as speaking with the headteacher (DSL), deputy head/(DDSL), business manager, safeguarding governor, pupils and staff.

The outcome was very positive and we are pleased to share the following headline statement:

‘The evidence presented demonstrates that Safeguarding and well-being of children is a clear priority for the school - especially around the mental health and well-being of children. The schools safeguarding arrangements evidence a number of areas of exemplary practice which are to be celebrated, as is the commitment the safeguarding team have towards the safeguarding and the well-being of children in their school.’

Leeds City Council Safeguarding Audit-May 2024