The first step to creating a safer environment in London Schools is to hire people you trust to ensure the safety of the students. If you want to change or improve your school safety, begin by focusing on your recruitment process and ensuring you are hiring the right people.
Student safety and security are crucial in schools. While the goal of the recruitment process is to find the best candidate, schools must create policies and develop steps that prioritise safety as a critical factor for hiring. Here are five ways recruitment in London Schools is getting safer.
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Planning the Recruitment Process Carefully
In organisations working with children, including those in educational settings, the safety and welfare of children and young people are crucial factors. Effective safeguarding for educational institutions starts with employing the right person for the post. Therefore, schools must carefully plan recruitment when hiring new staff or volunteers.
Those in charge of recruitment should understand that recruitment should involve betting potential applicants against DBS checks and effectively inducting a clear staff code of conduct. Every school in London must be confident that those they are hiring are entirely trustworthy and do not present a threat to the young students.
Every school must have safer recruitment policies or a set of practices to help ensure the staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children and young people. These policies are a vital part of creating a safer school environment and adhering to the commitment to keeping children safe while in school. The safer recruitment policies must apply to every school or institution whose work or services involve getting in contact with children.
While most people applying for work in London schools are safe and trustworthy, some dangerous individuals prey on organisations that allow them access to children and young people. Thus, safer recruitment policies must include robust practices and procedures for hiring the right people.
Defining the Roles
One way to ensure safety in recruiting for London schools is to define the roles clearly. Schools must be specific with the job or role descriptions during recruitment and clearly define their tasks. Doing so can help highlight the applicant’s safeguarding responsibilities.
When defining the roles, schools must also include the required parameters of their tasks and how to accomplish them. By being explicit, you are providing candidates with a sense of their work scope and how their role can be essential for ensuring safety in school.
For instance, when hiring a learning specialist, you must clearly explain that the role requires establishing excellence in teaching and learning within the teaching service. Learning specialists are skilled classroom practitioners who will spend most of their time with the students in a classroom setting. Given the importance of their roles in school, learning specialists have to undergo pre-employment checks to identify and deter those deemed unsuitable to work with children and young students.
Offering Safeguarding Training
Another way to ensure safety in London schools is to provide safeguarding training to every staff member, including volunteers working with children and young people. Safeguarding training courses are essential for everyone working in schools. Therefore, London schools should consider these a top priority.
One of the benefits of safeguarding training is teaching staff to identify those who might be vulnerable. Those who have not undergone the safeguarding course will find it difficult to distinguish which young people under their care are at risk of physical or mental abuse or neglect. The safeguarding training gives a thorough overview of how a particular individual could be vulnerable.
By giving staff online safeguarding training, they would be able to recognise tell-tale signs of abuse and neglect, enabling them to monitor the young people under their care and be consciously aware of their well-being.
Safeguarding training courses can also help improve the staff’s ability to communicate. Communicating with students under their care regarding their needs and well-being is the core of safeguarding. Thus, safeguarding training focuses on ways staff can safely talk to children and young people regarding neglect and abuse.
Vetting and Background Checks
One of the processes schools must carry out to ensure they are hiring the right people to work or volunteer for them is to perform background checks. Failing to perform or vet a background check on teachers, faculty members, and other staff can result in hiring people unqualified or unfit to be with children, potentially damaging the school’s reputation and integrity.
Schools in London must also perform criminal records check, which ensures that the applicants have nothing on their records that makes them unfit or unsafe to work or volunteer in schools or institutions that allow them to have contact with kids.
Different nations in the UK may have varying processes for conducting criminal records check, but they are all aimed at recognising each other’s decisions. Anyone barred from working with children in one nation will also not be allowed in other countries.
Depending on the size of the school and the type of background checks you require, you can apply directly or go through an umbrella body.
Verifying References
Verifying references can help London schools best decide about an applicant’s suitability to work with children. It is even more essential for those in safeguarding positions since it provides a clearer picture of the candidate’s character. When calling these references, ask about the candidate’s suitability and ability to work with kids and young people and their knowledge, experience, and understanding of safeguarding and child protection.
Ensure the information the reference will provide is consistent with the information the applicant submitted in their application form and interview. Don’t hesitate to ask about any discrepancies or vague statements.
You can obtain references from the candidate’s previous employers. If a candidate is not working at the time of application, you must verify their most recent employment period. When verifying references through previous employers, determine the actual reasons they left.
Once you have short-listed potential candidates, you can start calling their references. Make sure you do it before interviewing them. That way, you can discuss any issues or concerns you will uncover.
