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Safeguarding & Online Safety

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Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined as:

  • protecting children from maltreatment
  • preventing the impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
  • ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
  • taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play in safeguarding children.

All staff have a responsibility to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.

At Excelsior Academy we follow the updated guidance in the Department for Education document Keeping Children Safe in Education. All staff receive updated safeguarding training every year.

Key staff are trained to the standard of Designated Safeguarding Lead. The Academy has one overarching Designated Safeguarding Lead and five Deputy Designated Leads to support both pupils and staff in keeping the children and young people safe.

Online Safeguarding

In today’s connected world the wealth of information and opportunities that technology offers is immense. However, there is a darker side to this digital environment that leaves individuals vulnerable to all kinds of accidental or intentional harm.

Online safety means being aware of remote learning, information security, and cyber-crime. The issues within online safety are now categorised into four areas of risk:

Content

Being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful content, such as pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, anti-semitism, radicalisation and extremism.

Contact

Being subjected to harmful online interaction such as  peer-to-peer pressure, commercial advertising, and adults posing as children (or young adults) with the intention of grooming or exploiting children for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes.

Conduct

Personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm. For example, making, sending and/or receiving explicit images -including consensual and non-consensual sharing of nude and semi-nude images or pornography -  and online bullying.

Commerce

Risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams.

Whilst recognising all this, children and young people cannot be held back from all the positive benefits offered by information technology that has become an essential part of their everyday world. At school we will support them and educate them to remain and keep themselves safe online.

 

Excelsior Academy is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We keep ourselves, and each other, safe. Safeguarding is at the centre of everything we do here at Excelsior Academy, and the responsibility of every single member of our school community.

Although Excelsior Academy has a number of designated safeguarding staff members, we are all responsible and all here to support our pupils and school community. Safeguarding does not stop at the school gates, we all have a duty to safeguard children in any and all contexts. Our school culture is built upon Be Ready, Be Respectful and Be Safe, and a pillar of that culture is to provide our children with every opportunity to flourish in a safe and nurturing environment.

We want to ensure that children are safe online, and ask parents and carers to be vigilant and aware of the increased risks linked to children using technology and social media. It is important that you are aware of using appropriate filters where possible and have monitoring systems in place to protect children from potentially harmful online abuse.

 

Contextual Safeguarding

Contextual Safeguarding is an approach to understanding, and responding to children’s experiences of significant harm beyond their family and home. This approach recognises the different relationships children have in their schools, peer groups, online and in their community. Our culture of safeguarding means that it does not stop at the door or at the end of the school day. Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, everywhere, every time.

Through our day-to-day work with children and parents, conversations and activities in school, and being alert and aware of what is happening outside of school we aim to do everything that we physically can to keep our children and families safe. A child that does not feel safe or does not feel trust cannot be in a position to learn. We build relationships with our children and families that are built on trust, and work with, and challenge, other agencies to ensure that our children get the very best opportunity to succeed.

 

Staff Training & Awareness

Our staff all receive formal Safeguarding training annually, as well as annual updates on Keeping Children Safe in Education. All new staff members who join Excelsior Academy  take part in safeguarding training as part of their induction, and all staff receive regular, specific training in Prevent, County Lines and other key safeguarding issues. 

 

Safeguarding Team

At Excelsior Academy we have a dedicated team of Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSL) and sometimes we may need to share information and work in partnership with other agencies when there are concerns about a child's welfare. We will ensure that our concerns about our pupils are discussed with his/her parents/carers first unless we have reason to believe that such a move would be contrary to the child's welfare. 

 

 Academy Wide DSL - Kirsty Hunt  

We have a further 10 DDSLs across all key phases

Primary Phase - Jill Cullen (Primary Head), Zoe Sedgley

Secondary Phase - Edd Hodgson, Kim Reid, Danielle Cunningham, Carla Kay,  Katie Jacques

College - Lyndsey Noble, Amanda Dalgleish


Engage (Secondary Phase) - Deb Barakat