Reading Girls’ School Safeguarding Statement

At Reading Girls’ School, the health, safety and well-being of every child is our paramount concern. Our aim is for children to enjoy their time as students in this school. We want to work in partnership with you to help your child achieve their full potential and make a positive contribution.

To promote a safe environment for all students, our selection and recruitment policy includes all checks on staff and regular volunteers’ suitability, including checks with the Disclosure and Barring Services (DBS), as recommended by Buckinghamshire Council in line with current legislation.

In accordance with our responsibilities under section 175/157 of the Education Act 2002, and “Keeping Children Safe in Education”, we have a Designated Safeguarding Lead for Child Protection – Mrs  Stannard who is also our vice principal. Mrs Stannard and has received appropriate training for this role having completed advanced safeguarding training. It is her responsibility to ensure all staff in contact with children receive child protection awareness training on a regular basis.

We believe safeguarding and promoting our students’ welfare is everyone’s responsibility and we work together as a team to achieve this. We listen to our students and take seriously what they tell us. There are appropriate measures in place to monitor all visitors to our school and ensure they understand what to do if they have concerns about the safeguarding or well-being of a child.

There are occasions when concerns about a child may mean that we have to consult other agencies. Whilst we would always aim to work in partnership with parents, there may be exceptions to this when concerns are raised for the protection of a child. On very rare occasions Social Care, whilst undertaking an investigation under S47 of the Children Act 1989, may want to speak to a child without parents’ knowledge.

This decision would be made by the police and Social Care; we are required to work collaboratively with partner agencies and would therefore cooperate with direction given. This would only be done in situations where a child might be at immediate risk of harm. In such cases, to gain consent at this point may increase the level of risk to the child or cause evidence of a crime to be lost.

The procedures, which we follow, have been laid down by the Local Authority and Reading Girls’ School has adopted a Child Protection Policy in line with this for the safety of all. If you want to know more about our procedures, please speak to the Designated Safeguarding Lead, Mrs Stannard or the Headteacher, Mrs Farrugia. Mrs Bowden is the Safeguarding Trustee and Mrs Kazandjian is the safeguarding Lead for the Thames Learning Trust. They may be contacted via the school.

A copy of our Child Protection policy is available on our policies page here