Regents Review Autumn 2025 26

The Regents Review Autumn 2025

GENERAL NEWS with the ‘Higher Project Qualification’, even more of our most able students in Year 10 will be offered the chance to complete this qualification. The PE curriculum includes sports leadership skills and qualifications and in maths the most able students are entered for further maths. This rich Safeguarding The new academic year always starts with safeguarding training for all staff. This includes any national developments, local issues and reminders about our school procedures. It is made clear that although we have over 20 DSLs, that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility.

curriculum offer means our students experience real learning, gain the qualifications they need and have many opportunities to add to their college or job applications with a wide range of experiences, additional qualifications and certificates.

The important topic of child-on-child sexual abuse is also covered during these assemblies and it is made clear to students about what is unacceptable behaviour and could be categorised as sexual abuse. This is an important message to make sure students know how to protect themselves as well as others. Smoothwall is our online monitoring system. This blocks staff and students from looking at any content deemed inappropriate. When a student – or member of staff – gets ‘smoothwalled’ an alert is sent to the Lead DSL and the Pastoral Assistant Headteacher, who then investigate. Most often the searches are innocent and linked to classroom learning, but where they are not, students are spoken to and sanctioned or supported according to the nature of the alert. Parents are also updated. The online world continues to be one of the greatest dangers for children and this is one of the more frequent safeguarding concerns we deal with.

Staff training on safeguarding is regular and in different forms throughout the year. A weekly bulletin is emailed round, which includes things like issues in the press, advice from the Local Authority safeguarding team or just reminders about school policy. In addition to this, each training day has a ‘safeguarding snapshot’ and we also use an online platform called SSSCPD for training on different safeguarding themes. Of course, the lead DSL and some of the deputies, attend other training with the Local Authority and participate in government online seminars and workshops. Students’ first safeguarding assembly followed a similar structure. They were reminded of the DSL team and also that they can go to any member of staff in school to report a concern. The assemblies were adapted for year groups with Year 7 being introduced to some key RPCC values and expectations around their own safety and conduct towards others.

5