Safeguarding in Schools: An Educator’s Guide

The Department for Education’s statutory guidance sets out four headline objectives for safeguarding and child protection policies:

1.    Protecting children from maltreatment
2.    Preventing the impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
3.    Ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
4.    Taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes

As you can see, preventing or halting abuse is not the only consideration in effective safeguarding. Educators should also strive to create positive cultures that allow pupils to happily see out their full potentials. However, this should not distract from the real and pressing need to understand and identify abuse in children.

One challenge for educators looking to stop a suspected case of maltreatment is knowing exactly what amounts to abuse. Some parents will wave away such accusations by claiming that the whistleblower simply doesn’t understand their particular context. They might also claim that their actions are just part of the warp and weft of robust discipline.

To overcome this kind of obfuscation, educators should remember that there are four categories of abuse. These are:

1.    Physical abuse: any act that intentionally cause physical harm
2.    Emotional abuse: ongoing emotional maltreatment that has an adverse impact on a child’s development
3.    Sexual abuse: coercing or enticing a child to engage in sexual activities or exposing them to media of a sexual nature
4.    Neglect: persistently failing to meet the child’s basic needs

There are also some highly-specific subtypes of abuse that fall within – or straddle - these categories. These include child trafficking, honour-based violence, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage. 

With such a broad spectrum of abusive behaviours, educators need to be attuned to their various possible manifestations.

Some general indicators of abuse or mistreatment include obsessive behaviour, self-harm, delayed development, missing school, aggression, anxious or clingy behaviour, soiling clothes or wetting the bed, and reporting frequent nightmares.

This is a pretty wide set of signals, many of which will also occur in children with happy home lives. Educators must use their discretion before seizing on any of them as surefire confirmation of abuse.

Digging down into the four categories of abuse, child development experts propose some specific signs for each of them that educators should be alert to.

If a child comes to you to report abuse, it’s very important to take them seriously. Children rarely lie about abuse, so you should never downplay their concerns or minimise what they’re telling you. Instead, you should give them the time and space to describe what’s happening to them. Take care to reassure them that they won’t get into any trouble.

Whatever you do, don't promise the child that you won’t tell anyone else about the abuse. At some point, you will have to. Breaches of trust, even if well-intentioned, can cause children genuine distress that reverberates throughout their lives. 

The biggest threats to children online include:

•    Cyberbullying
•    Adult predators
•    ‘Doxxing’ (having your private details shared)
•    Phishing scams
•    Accidentally downloading malware

Effective digital safeguarding relies on making sure that both children and adults are properly clued up on the risks of online activity. The NSPCC recommends the TEAM framework for protecting children online:

•    Talk: engage children in honest conversation about their online life
•    Explore: build up some familiarity with the sites and apps they use
•    Agree: establish some basic rules and limits of their internet use
•    Manage: set up some parental controls and general use settings

If you suspect that online abuse is taking place, report it immediately. Gather as much evidence as possible, such as screenshots that you can send to the relevant websites and messaging platforms.

If a child is being cyberbullied by a peer, let the school safeguarding lead know; they will almost certainly have protocols for dealing with cyberbullying. 

Children’s safety and wellbeing is our top priority at Teaching Personnel. That’s why we require all our registered educators to complete an accredited online course in safeguarding and child protection training every year as a condition of working in schools.

If you have not already completed your safeguarding training for this year, click here to take the free course.