At Barnwood Park school, safeguarding is at the heart of everything we do. Staff are trained to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum that gives pupils opportunities to experience life in all its diversity, to acquire knowledge and skills required for personal safeguarding.

The intent of the school’s curriculum is to ensure that all pupils are able to amass a sufficiently wide and extensive set of knowledge and skills, so that they are suitably prepared for the next steps of their education and to participate fully in the world in which they live. To remain safe now, and participate fully and safely in society in the future, we ensure that pupils are taught about safeguarding, including online safety in our curriculum, as well as how to report concerns and seek support whenever they need it.

The implementation of our safeguarding curriculum is explicitly through our PSHE and ICT lessons, weekly assemblies and during form time.

Our preventative safeguarding curriculum is responsive to the needs of our pupils based on what we hear and see or what is reported to us. For instance, during 2022-2023 we introduced learning about online influencers due to a rise in concerns about misogynistic views; there was also specific teaching about “The Hackett’s Continuum of sexualised behaviours” in response to Ofsted’s review (2021) of sexual abuse in schools and colleges following the “Everyone’s invited” campaign. In 2023-2024 we have introduced a drop-down day looking at the impact of Youth Violence as well as a play to Year 9 pupils called “Breaking the Chain”.

The impact of our sequenced safeguarding curriculum is monitored and evidenced through a number of measures such as behaviour incidents, incidence of prejudicial behaviour and sexual harassment, attendance rates, risk concerns raised by staff and pupils. The impact is also apparent through the culture and lived experience of pupils and staff at the school, which are determined by our annual safeguarding audit and review, surveys (of pupils and parents) and our staff surveys.

Barnwood Park School Safeguarding/Child Protection Team

Safeguarding

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined as: 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.

See below our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy.