Safety and Security in School

In order to help with safety and security in schools, and indeed allay young people fears for their own safety, we do use the legal powers schools have to search pupils for prohibited items with or without their consent.

We would like to believe that all the pupils attending Highams Park School want to be safe in school and would therefore support and co-operate with any search we felt necessary.

In collaboration with the Police we sometimes conduct screening for knives on entry to the school and at other times we may search pupils for prohibited items in school.

The timing and frequency of such screening is determined by what we believe the best way is to ensure that pupils are not tempted to bring knives and other weapons into school.

We believe one of the ways we can help pupils' safety is to deter them from even thinking about bringing such things to school.

Screening and searches will, we hope, be such a deterrent. Screening is conducted using no/low contact methods i.e. using a hand held metal detector as seen in other security situations. We trust that all parents will support this approach to helping to keep young people safe and we would encourage parents to talk to their children about the dangers of knives and other weapons and the need to stay safe.

While on the subject of safety and security, we would like to remind parents that currently we have a "Safer Schools" police constable assigned to the school.

Also, like most secondary schools and other public buildings, we have a large number of CCTV cameras that view most of the school to help pupil's safety while in school and combat bullying, theft, vandalism and other anti-social behaviour.