Recommendation 5

The next part of what I suggest be done at St. Benedict's concerns greater openness towards parents.

There shall be more encouragement given to the involvement of parents in the life of the school. Parents should be welcome on the premises at any time, for instance to observe lessons or to assist with extracurricular activities. Safe recruitment practices shall always be followed with respect to any parent who volunteers for activities which involve the supervision of children at the school. This will include induction training in safeguarding and the parent’s role in this.

There are actually two aspects to this. First is encouraging parents to enter more into the life of the school. This has an advantage in terms of safeguarding in that it is more eyes and ears available to notice anything amiss, quite apart from any other advantages this may have.

The second part of the recommendation is that if a parents volunteers for some activity that involves supervising pupils, rather than acting as an observer, such as Scouts, cadets, mountain-walking trips or some other activity, then the same rules on getting them CRB checked need to apply as for the staff.

If the parents wish to ensure that the school is safe, then they can reasonably expect that all staff shall be thoroughly checked, without exception. It is also reasonable for parents to expect that volunteers will also be similarly checked, and so should have no issue with being checked if they themselves volunteer. They key to keeping known dangers away from children is no exceptions to these checks.