Parents and teachers face several challenging when bringing up young people. Two groups of young people stand out. The first is children in care. The second relates to young people who are in danger of being addicted to social media.
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The Department for Education issues new security guidance for schools, academies and colleges
31 DecOn 5 November 2019, the Department for Education (DfE) published new security guidance for schools, academies and colleges. Institutions should follow the guidance alongside safeguarding responsibilities and obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (HASAWA) and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSWR).
The government is keen for schools and academies to take the matter of security even more seriously than they did before. When criticised that it had not been more prescriptive on this subject, the government spokesperson said that schools and academy leaders were best-placed to make decisions on their own security policies. The guidance encourages schools and academies to form partnerships with the police and local authorities when taking measures to tighten up on security, so that they can share information.
According to the British Educational Suppliers’ Association (BESA), there were 24,323 schools and academies in England in 2019. This included 391 at nursery, 16,769 at primary and 3,448 at secondary level. There were also 1,044 special schools and academies and 352 Pupil Referral Units (PRUs). However, over the consultation period about security, only 26 schools and academies responded to the DfE. The DfE said that 51% of respondents did not think that the guidance was enough and only 41% said that it was.
The DfE spokesperson said: “Our assessment is that these responses show that there is no consensus about whether the guidance should be more prescriptive than the consultation draft, or that an enabling document that directs schools and colleges to expert advice is a preferable approach.”
The DfE said it had rewritten the guidance to make it flow better and strengthened advice on the curriculum, police-school partnership arrangements, the value of developing relationships more widely, and testing recovery and business continuity. The guidance stresses that schools and academies should “regularly test policies and handling plans”.
“Practice drills will identify where improvements can be made and enable you to assess what the wider residual effects of an incident are likely to be. You should consider involving neighbouring schools or colleges, local police, local authorities, academy trusts or other outside agencies in helping evaluate practice drills.”
Keeping children safe: more changes take effect from September
12 AugMore changes are to take effect from September 2019 so that schools and academies keep children safer. At the time of writing, the updated guidance had not been published. What is extant on keeping children safe in schools, academies and colleges can be found here. The Department for Education has been extremely helpful in that it has brought together everything that you should know about safeguarding children in one on-line document which you can access here.
(1) What’s new
(a) On-line safety
Much of the law and guidance has been around for some time. What is relatively new is the measures trustees, governors and staff in schools and academies should take to protect youngsters from peer-on-peer abuse. In particular, steps are necessary to prevent “up-skirting”. A peer up-skirts when he photographs a girl’s clothing – without her knowing – for sexual gratification.
Adults – especially teaching and support staff in schools/academies – are required to put into action the on-line safety guidance from the DfE. (See the paragraph above.)
(b) Peer-on-peer abuse
Peer-on-peer abuse is particularly daunting because, more often than not, both, the victim and the perpetrator are vulnerable, the victim because s/he has suffered abuse at the hands of the perpetrator and the perpetrator because s/he has probably been a victim somewhere else and is venting her/his spleen on the victim.
David Smellie, partner at the law firm Farrer, provided The Times Education Supplement with 10 recommendations for schools/academies to use when dealing with this kind of abuse. These are as follows.
(1) Make a prompt referral to statutory agencies.
(2) Always remember the statutory right of the victim to anonymity.
(3) Be proactive with police and social services. Propose how you think the school/academy should handle it and seek to get staff on board.
(4) Remember the role that can be played by local rape and sexual violence crisis centres. Victims will often be very nervous about reporting to or cooperating with the police. These centres have the expertise to be able to offer concrete and confidential advice to victims and there is no risk to victims from seeking that advice.
(5) When facing either a decision by the police not to investigate (for example, by reason of the victim’s wishes) or where there has been an arrest but with a lengthy investigation in prospect, look to develop a safety plan.
(6) The default option must not be to move or remove the victim. Remember that if that happens, you will forever undermine the confidence of future victims of sexual violence to report or come forward.
(7) Any safety plan in these circumstances must involve detailed consultation with the victim and her/his family and with the accused and her/his family. Use advice from children’s services and police to inform the assessment of risk and possible mitigation measures.
(8) Secure buy-in from statutory agencies to any safety plan. They may not be that keen at first, but it pays to be persistent.
(9) Supplement advice where necessary with your own expert inputs, for example from the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, and/or adolescent psychologists.
(10) At all stages, talk and keep talking to the victim, and offer support in whatever way you can.
Managing critical incidents: tragedies, threats and disasters
12 Aug(1) Preparing for the unexpected
Schools/academies are centres of learning. However, threats, disasters and tragedies sometimes disrupt the conditions for learning. Governors, headteachers and staff must deal with mishaps and calamities expeditiously and effectively as and when they arise. This is possible only if there are critical incident plans in place. Better still, governors, headteachers and staff should be familiar with the contents of these plans and take swift and appropriate action in line with them as and when needs must.
What does one do if the school/academy is on fire? How will the authorities act if pupils on a school trip are involved in a car, plane, train or boat crash? What if a pupil suffering from epilepsy has a fit but the school is not aware of her condition or does not know what to do in such an eventuality? Preparation for these unusual events are crucial for the smooth running of the institution.
The Department for Education (DfE) has provided useful guidance for schools/academies on what to do to plan for such emergencies. A plan must be generic and provide for responding appropriate to the following incidents.
- Serious injury to a pupil or member of staff as a consequence (for instance) of a transport accident
- Serious injuries to pupils who are on a school trip on road, sea or air
- Significant damage to school property (e.g. fire)
- Criminal activity (e.g. bomb threat)
- Severe weather resulting, for instance, in flooding
- Public health incidents such as a flu pandemic
- The effects of a disaster in the local community – such as the Grenfell Tower inferno that happened in the summer of 2019.
Promoting children’s welfare: foci on obesity and knives
17 AugSchools and academies are responsible for promoting children’s welfare and protecting them from harm. They do so very well – indeed so much so that Children’s Social Services are relieved when they (the schools/academies) shut down for the summer recess. It is then that the pressure of constant referrals that schools/academies make to Social Workers of children being physically, sexually and emotionally abused or neglected reduces significantly.
Two other areas to which governors, headteachers and staff members should give some attention are children’s love of fast foods, especially their penchant for fast foods – a key cause of obesity – and the increasing incidence of knife crime.
Safeguarding Children: new DfE advice issued
20 AprKeeping Children Safe in Education, statutory guidance from the Department for Education, was issued 5 September 2016. On 14 December 2017, the government began consultation on
- revisions to the guidance and the legal duties with which they must comply to keep children safe and
- new advice on sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges
The consultations, which sought views on a new non-statutory 41-page document that gives schools long-awaited advice on how to deal with peer-on-peer abuse, including sexual assaults and sexual harassment committed by children on other children, closed on 22 February 2018.
Changes in the new version of the document, which takes effect in September 2018, were prompted by a number of factors, such as worries about peer-on-peer abuse, “a coroner’s concerns following the death of a child” and requests from schools for more clarity about exchange visits.
In 2017, The Times Educational Supplement reported that some schools had put pupils who were raped back into the classroom with their alleged attackers.
Deighton Pierce Glynn, Solicitors, wrote to ex-Education Secretary Justine Greening in September 2017, accusing her of being in breach of her duties under the Equality Act 2010 to eliminate discrimination against girls in school.
In November 2017, financially supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), they threatened judicial review proceedings if the DfE did not act quickly to protect students from peer-on-peer abuse.
Green Paper on mental health provision in schools and academies
31 DecI Proposals
On 4 December 2017, the government published a Green Paper and an open consultation around “transforming children and young people’s mental health provision”.[1] Jointly issued by the Secretary of State for Education Justine Greening and Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, the Green Paper sets out plans which could have implications for how schools deal with mental ill-health amongst children and young people. The Paper proposes that every school/academy appoint an individual as a “designated lead in mental health”, with a national training programme fully in place by 2025. This individual will take the lead to help young people with mental health issues, provide support and advice to them and staff, and teach students about the warning signs associated with poor mental health.
The mental health lead will also have the power to make referrals to “specialist services” for the victims of mental ill-health.
The proposals recommend that each school mental health lead be linked to wider support teams, forming a bridge between the school/academy/college and the NHS which will mean that every school/academic and college will find it much easier to contact and work with mental health services.
As part of the initiative, the government wants to carry out further research around
- the impact of the internet, particularly social media, on mental health;
- how families can provide support to those suffering with mental health issues; and
- how mental health problems can be avoided in the future.
Further work will also be carried out to see how mental health for 16-25 year olds can be improved.
In the Executive Summary, the government trumpeted what it had already achieved. It mentioned the following.
“We have:
(i) legislated for parity of esteem between physical and mental health;
(ii) promised to ensure that an additional 70,000 children and young people per year will obtain support from mental health services by 2020/21;
(iii) improved services for eating disorders, with an additional £30 million of investment, established 70 new or enhanced Community Eating Disorder Teams, and set the first-ever waiting times for eating disorders and psychosis;
(iv) funded eight areas to test different crisis approaches for children and young people’s mental health and tested New Care Models for Mental Health; and
(v) published cross-agency Local Transformation Plans for children and young people’s mental health for every area of the country.”
In the second chapter of the Green Paper added: “We have made our commitment clear through significant investment in services for children and young people, including:
- legislating for parity of esteem between physical and mental health in 2012;
- investing record levels in mental health services, totalling £11.6 billion in 2016/17;
- making an additional £1.4 billion available for children’s and young people’s mental health between 2015/16 – 2019/20 to enable an additional 70,000 children per year to be seen by children’s and young people’s mental health services by 2020/21; and
- committing to recruit 1,700 more therapists and supervisors, and train 3,400 existing staff to deliver evidence based treatments.”
