Intent

‘We expect schools to use their PSHE education programme to equip pupils with a sound understanding of risk and with the knowledge and skills necessary to make safe and informed decisions.’ DfE (2021)

Safety education is the teaching of specific knowledge, skills and understanding that children need in order to stay safe in a given situation. Generally, schools themselves are safe places for children of all ages, so the focus of safety and risk education is to prepare children and young people for the world outside of school, now and in the future.

Pupil safety and the promotion of fundamental British values are a core business of our work at Henbury View First School. Great importance is placed on identifying opportunities in the taught curriculum for children to learn about safety. Our broad curriculum gives pupils opportunities to experience life in all its diversity, to acquire knowledge, understanding and skills that significantly impact on personal development, behaviour and welfare and equips every child with the knowledge and skills required for personal and group safety. Our separate Safety curriculum covers all areas of Safeguarding through each of the strands to a different degree, however some go into more detail. We are sensitive in our teaching and recognise that some more sensitive subjects need to be taught at an age-appropriate level, or at a small group or 1:1 level where a more urgent need arises.

We plan to constantly challenge children to think deeply about safety matters and their own personal physical and mental wellbeing. We value pupils’ questions and give them space for their own thoughts, ideas and concerns. We give them opportunities across the curriculum to explore values, personal rights, responsibilities and equal opportunities that develop moral concepts that impact positively on safety, promote British values and prevent radicalisation and extremism.

Implementation

There are many opportunities throughout our learning in school to explore safety issues. Safety (and risk) education are included in several statutory subjects including science, design and technology, and physical education. To accompany this, safety lessons are planned regularly and mapped out to ensure children are building upon the knowledge they already have in any given year group. Progressions for the safety curriculum can be seen below, where vocabulary and knowledge is at the forefront of what and how the children engage with the content. By doing this, we can be more certain that the children are gaining knowledge about how to keep themselves and others safe, both at school and at home, at an age-appropriate level.

Key Threads

At Henbury View, we have key threads that run through and across year groups. These will continually be revisited and explored across the academic journey of a child at Henbury. Each thread is underpinned by key vocabulary and knowledge that will be explicitly taught in safety sessions. The key threads are: