Best Practice

Safeguarding priorities and safer recruitment

What steps can your school take to strengthen safer recruitment and to keep on top of emerging safeguarding issues? With a focus on addressing issues of child-on-child abuse, James Simoniti advises


Safeguarding is a priority for the leader of every school, but how much attention do you give to this when you are recruiting paid and volunteer staff?

Despite the budget pressures schools currently face they will always need to recruit paid employees. And with money tight it is possible that volunteers may start to play a bigger role in school life.

That creates heightened complex challenges for schools. Volunteers can be an amazing resource – I have met some incredible people volunteering in schools who enhance not only the education of children, but the life chances of children in their community.

But educational establishments must not dilute their due diligence for the sake of convenience and must ensure that risk assessments are conducted on volunteers and that they consider what checks should be done on each individual on a case-by-case basis.

Register now, read forever

Thank you for visiting Headteacher Update and reading some of our content for professionals in primary education. Register now for free to get unlimited access to all content.

What's included:

  • Unlimited access to news, best practice articles and podcasts

  • New content and e-bulletins delivered straight to your inbox every Monday

Register

Already have an account? Sign in here