Safeguarding statement:

At Nun Monkton Foundation Primary School, the safety and well-being of all our pupils and staff is paramount. Clear guidelines, policies and structures are in place to ensure our safeguarding is robust. We operate a culture where all children and their views are valued, staff regularly discuss safeguarding matter to keep an ‘arena of safety’ for our pupils and where action is swiftly taken if a concern is noted about a child.

We have systems within school for any adult to raise a concern, staff have all read the Keeping Children Safe in Education document (Sept 2024) and are aware of their duty of care, as well as the need for them to always act and pursue action further if they are concerned about a child. At the entrance to our school, all visitors are given information about safeguarding before entering the school, which highlights safeguarding issues, including who the Designated Safeguarding Lead and Deputy Safeguarding Lead are and what to do if they have a concern. Written information is also available.

All regular volunteers in our school are DBS checked and have completed child safeguarding training before working with children. When appropriate, staff work with the excellent professional staff within North Yorkshire Local Authority’s coordinated children’s services team to ensure speedy action and pooling of information from all professionals and concerned adults working with children. Regular training is provided for staff and governors. We have a designated safeguarding governor, who is proactive in visiting school at least termly and meeting with the DSL and DDSL. A high proportion of our staff are First Aid trained (including paediatric first aid) .

 Thorough and detailed risk assessments are completed, shared and approved ahead of any time children are learning off site, to ensure we keep our pupils safe. As you would expect, Health and safety are high priority for us all to ensure the safety of everyone at school. Our PHSE and SRE curriculum give children the building blocks to keep themselves safe and healthy and our computing teaching has e safety learning threaded through. The school’s ICT systems are managed by N Yorkshire Digital; we benefit from a robust filtering and monitoring system (Smoothwall) to protect our computer systems. protection it affords. We support parents in protecting children online with a monthly e-safety newsletter.

 Child Protection and safeguarding

Nun Monkton School is committed to ensuring the welfare and safety of all children in school. All North Yorkshire schools, including Nun Monkton School, follow the North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Board procedures. The school will, in most circumstances, endeavour to discuss all concerns with parents about their child/ren. However, there may be exceptional circumstances when the school will discuss concerns with Social Care and/or the Police without parental knowledge (in accordance with Child Protection procedures). The school will, of course, always aim to maintain a positive relationship with all parents. The school’s child protection policy is available publicly on the school website.

All the safeguarding strategies we have in place support our school aims to ‘Create a safe and stimulating place where children are happy and enthusiastic learners, where they learn how to keep themselves safe and healthy, able to communicate & work in a team, developing confidence and life skills together’.