Assistant Principal - Safeguarding

Thank you for your interest in joining our Safeguarding team at Abbeyfield School. It is an exciting time to be joining our school, as we embark on a truly unique approach to Safeguarding and student wellbeing.

As a former DSL of many years in highly deprived areas, I am aware of the vital role that every staff member plays in ensuring the safety and wider wellbeing of students. I am, therefore, sadly aware of the challenges that safeguarding staff face in the context of the daily battle to meet the needs of our students and their families.

It is my commitment that safeguarding roles should be underpinned by significant capacity for those overseeing it as a whole school cultural requirement. In this regard, the structure that we are investing in is as follows:

Assistant Principal (Safeguarding): Our Designated Safeguarding Lead will be a member of the Senior Leadership Team but will not have a teaching timetable. We are open to a teaching staff member or non-teaching staff member fulfilling this position, but owing to the unique approach, there will be no classroom loading.

Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead x2: Two DDSL staff members as non-teaching members of the safeguarding team, trained and supported with CPD to deputise for the DSL and resourced appropriately to do so- potential career advancement to DSL level could be an aspiration which we would be keen to support.

Safeguarding Administrator: Trained and qualified to support the safeguarding team and support the administration of the wider role.

Our commitment as a school is to devote full timetables to all safeguarding staff for the purposes of embedding exemplary safeguarding provision. All totalled, the Safeguarding team is being allocated 200 timetable hours a fortnight to create a truly special and ground breaking safeguarding model that we hope will become best practice for other schools. Whilst there will undoubtedly be some out of hours requirements, our commitment to the wellbeing and workload of our staff is clear.

Abbeyfield school is also well resourced in terms of staff for pastoral support. We are fortunate to have social workers, Heads of Year and Assistant Heads of Year in each year group, as well as mentors and student support workers.

In addition, we have invested in our attendance team to deal with the emerging challenges around attendance in a post pandemic environment.

I look forward to receiving your application for the relevant position. Interest will be high, so please do not hesitate to get in touch should you wish to discuss the vision for the team or specific positions.

Yours Sincerely,

Jay Kerby,

Principal