At Claremont College we have a fundamental duty of care to protect children. Our Protective Behaviours sessions are embedded into everyday lessons and conversations. It's also very important, from time to time, to also explicitly address areas of potential danger such as road safety, stranger danger, cyber and e-safety, beach safety, grooming and predators, and potential dangers at school, home and in our community.
These Protective Behaviours lessons combine explicit teaching, examples, role play and strategies that, in an age appropriate way, allow children to process, discuss and practise how to keep themselves safe in a range of unsafe situations. Increasing awareness of self and others is a crucial part of these lessons as we focus on how the body's early warning systems often kick in to try and warn us of potential dangers and how important it is to listen to these warnings.
Statistics around child protection are frightening and would suggest that there are children in our school who are, have been or will be exposed to risk and danger. We pray it will never happen, but opportunistic predators are everywhere and sadly more frequently in our homes due to the internet. We take very seriously our role in protecting these children. Our stringent guidelines for staff, employees and volunteers are another aspect of child protection that we take very seriously and address through Working with Children Checks, pastoral care meetings and through staff training and development.
Our Protective Behaviours lessons deliver a balance of assurance and caution where children are encouraged to question and speak up when something doesn't feel right. We encourage you to commend your child for this, even if it can be embarrassing for adults when children refuse to shake someone's hand or smile at them - they are communicating their feelings when they do this and we should respect and support them. Manners and the insistence on being polite are often exploited by predators and we aim to teach your child how to be assertive without being rude so that they can feel in control when they feel uncomfortable about something, whether it be at home, school or when in someone else's care or home.
At Claremont College we teach these lessons every term. Unfortunately, the statistics show that the transference of information from what children learn in class to other contexts is often not as strong as we would hope, so we encourage you to discuss with your child the content of the lessons as you begin the holiday break and revisit the topic from time to time. Thank you for your support with this, as we endeavour to empower our Claremont children to feel safe in and out of school.
Larissa Cameron Deputy Principal
