Pickering Community Junior School takes its safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously; safeguarding is central to the work that we do and there is a strong safeguarding culture. At Pickering Community Junior School, we recognise the vital importance of robust procedures and practices which lead to a safe learning environment for every child in our care. We understand that there is a need to promote a culture where there is a shared responsibility for every aspect of safeguarding and to create an arena of safety for all our children. Whether we are planning school visits to enrich our curriculum or inviting adults into our school, we understand that it is our duty to keep children safe whilst they are in our care.

Aims

Our recruitment processes for all posts in school are rigorous and conform to current recommended guidance to do our utmost to ensure that only those suitable to work with children are employed. We ensure that those staff involved in recruitment have undergone the latest Safer Recruitment Training.

We have a Staff and Volunteer Code of Conduct in place which sets out detailed policies and procedures for staff to follow – these have been put in place to keep everybody safe. Our Child Protection Policy also ensures that where a child makes a disclosure about an event outside school, there are appropriate procedures in place to ensure that action is taken to support the child.

Safeguarding the children within our care is wider than just policy documents. We aim to create an arena of safety at school where children feel valued, respected and cared for in a building that is safe, well maintained and conducive to learning. Local contextual safeguarding risks are clearly understood by all members of staff and are addressed through our curriculum (in PSHCE and Computing lessons in particular) and through our schedule of assemblies. Our policy documents are shared with key stakeholders and their implementation is monitored by our governing body and senior leaders in school. Our governing body have over-arching responsibility for checking that our school complies with necessary regulations. Their recommendations to the Full Governing Body are implemented in full.

A wide range of additional policies and procedures ensure that children are kept safe which includes:

• Child Protection Policy
• First Aid Procedure
• Health and Safety Policies and procedures
• Race and Disability Policies
• Fire Safety Procedures
• Relational Behaviour for Learning Policy
• Anti-Bullying Policy
• Suspensions and Exclusions Policy 
• Online Safety Policy
• Risk assessments

Many of these, along with other key policy documents, can be found in the ‘Policy Section’ of the website.