Headteacher blog 18th March 2022

It has been a lovely week at school. The sun is shining more and we have a flurry of off-site outdoor educational visits. This week, Year 2 have enjoyed trips to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park and over the next two weeks all of Year 3 are going to Harlow Carr Gardens in Harrogate and Year 4 are going to Murton Park near York for a day as Vikings! Educational visits are an important part of our curriculum and I am glad we are back up and running with them. We try to keep costs to families to a minimum, and we haven’t asked for any contribution to transport costs for these trips. Thank you for your support with this.

On Wednesday we had an external audit of all our safeguarding and child protection policies and practice. This wide-ranging examination covered all sorts of elements of our work: HR and recruitment, culture, communication, curriculum, multi-agency and family work, training and much more. As expected, we have some small areas to update and action – a document link here, a new form there – but overall the final report is very positive. It states that “safeguarding and well-being of children is a priority for the school” and that the “school’s safeguarding arrangements… evidence some areas of exemplary practice which are to be celebrated.”  Well done to all the team for their on-going work on this.

The evidence presented demonstrates that the safeguarding and well-being of children is a priority for the school. Staff are provided with regular safeguarding information and can discuss the risks that children face and how to respond to any concerns. The children spoke about having opportunities to share concerns through the pastoral team and that they could speak to any teacher in school. They also spoke of having opportunities to learn about how to keep themselves safe through the PHSE curriculum. The support provided for vulnerable children is well-evidenced with positive relationships with external support services and the internal pastoral interventions/systems in school. School share relevant information with parents around aspects of childrens safety through the website and parent groups. The schools safeguarding arrangements do evidence some areas of exemplary practice which are to be celebrated.