Should you be worried about the hidden online dangers of cyber crime on school grounds? Are your kids harassed in the playground? Just how safe are our children when we send them to school?
With so many dangers in modern life, school is the one area of our children’s existence where we have no influence. We are not there. We don’t see what goes on between staff and students. It’s only natural to worry about what goes on when we expose our children to outside influence without your supervision. Fortunately, schools have systems in place that protect our children, even when they are not in our care.
Today, we want to talk about the safety of children when they go to (UK) schools. With a lack of gun crime in the UK, we expose our children to far less threats than US children might be. Nevertheless, there are plenty of threats out there that could impact our children’s lives when we are not around to protect them.
We want to know how safe it is to send your child to school here in the UK. Is it as safe as it has always been, or are there new threats about which we should worry? Let’s find out.
How Safe Are Kids in UK Schools?
Kids are supposed to be as safe at home as they are in school, but that’s not always the case. With predatory behaviour at an all time high, kids are routinely exposed to potential dangers that they do not yet have the capacity to understand. There are things we can do as parents to protect them, encouraging a no-secrets household policy or instructing our children about unsafe experiences – but as soon as they go to school, their safety is out of our hands.
Schools can discipline our children to a certain extent. They can control who comes and goes on their premises to make sure nobody is spying on the children, and they can even search and screen pupils in England and Wales to ensure there are no weapons on school premises. The UK government has strict policies on keeping kids safe in schools. Still, there are problems.
What Schools do to Protect Children?
Just as we protect our own children, schools have policies in place that help our kids thrive. One of these is safeguarding training and it is the most important type of training that a teacher does. Safeguarding training is training teachers in awareness of neglect or abuse. If we train teachers to spot bullying, lashing out, or potential violence outside of school hours, then any child that teacher teaches will be safer as a result.
Hays offer comprehensive safeguarding training for school workers all over the UK. From compliance to staff wellbeing, their safeguarding training incorporates recognising and acting upon abuse and neglect as standard.
Child Incident Rates in the UK
There are fairly routine numbers of health and safety breaches in Schools in the UK. If you are concerned about this, you can search the HSE website for your school.
