Teaching Pupils How to Keep Themselves Safe from Harm

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There are many different aspects to safeguarding in schools. In addition to safeguarding training for teachers and staff members, it’s also important for the children in your care to be well informed about how to stay safe.

Research has shown that although safeguarding training builds the foundation for implementing successful safeguarding practices, it’s teaching pupils about safeguarding that has yielded some of the most positive results. By creating teaching and learning activities around the principles of safeguarding that engage your pupils, you can foster an inclusive, engaging environment that accurately informs them about issues surrounding safeguarding.

So, what are the best ways to do this? Explore some of the safeguarding teaching and learning activities that you can guide your pupils through to teach them how to keep themselves, and their classmates safe from harm.

As teachers and staff will have learnt from their own safeguarding training, the first step in teaching pupils how to stay safe is to get them to recognise how to take responsibility for their own safety.

Safeguarding Training: Teaching Pupils to Be Aware of Their Environment

Safeguarding is as much about the emotional and mental well-being of children as it is their physical safety. An excellent training exercise is getting pupils to recognise dangers and harmful situations by having them chat through what they think of as dangerous. This is especially helpful as it teaches pupils not only how to recognise potentially dangerous or harmful situations for themselves, but also which situations might be potentially risky for others.

This exploration of situations can cover whatever is relevant for your particular pupils, but it’s an excellent opportunity to talk about situations where pupils might be more vulnerable, such as during independent travel or hazardous rooms, such as laboratories, workshop and swimming pools.

Once pupils have learnt which situations are potentially harmful or dangerous, you can then teach them the preventative actions they can take to keep themselves and their schoolmates safe.

Ensuring that pupils have an awareness of the impact of their own attitudes and behaviours about safety is an essential part of safeguarding. By getting pupils to explore and understand their own attitudes, you can teach them how to be aware of the safety of others, and to be mindful of how they interact with strangers.

Prevent Bullying and Teach Pupils How to Stay Safe Online

Implementing safeguarding practices through teaching and learning is also a brilliant opportunity to talk to students about preventing bullying in schools. The principles of safeguarding apply directly to bullying prevention. In fact, many schools have reported that having their staff undergo safeguarding training has resulted in decreased incidents of bullying in schools. Talking with your pupils about dangerous situations is the perfect opportunity to discuss their worries regarding bullying, and to inform them about the different forms that bullying can take.

Safeguarding training also instructs teachers and staff about how to teach pupils about other pertinent safety issues, such as online safety. In our ever-growing digital world, children need to be as aware of their day-to-day online activities as they are about their physical ones. By teaching students how to be aware of dangers online, and the harmful websites they should be steering away from both inside and outside of school, you’re empowering pupils to be mindful of their own online activity and helping them understand the various factors that can make them vulnerable online.

Do you believe your staff could benefit from safeguarding training? Start your free trial today!        

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