Tes Safeguarding Awareness Week highlights the increase in concerns about school safety
Schools across the South East are facing safeguarding concerns from their staff.
New data from Tes has revealed that three-quarters of school staff in the South East feel that there are more safeguarding concerns raised now than before the pandemic.
Their Safeguarding Awareness Week is being used as a chance to highlight the issues of safeguarding in schools, especially due to the recent reports of the rise of sexual harassment in schools.
Almost a quarter of the school staff surveyed in the South East say they do not think pupils feel safe at their school.
Dawn Jotham is the pastoral and safeguarding lead for Tes, she told us:
"Safeguarding shouldn't just be about policies and procedures. It's not a tick box exercise, it's actually about caring.
"And if we do that right, then actually children will flourish.
"So we call it cognitive safeguarding, so just think, if you don't feel safe in an environment, you're not going to put your hand up in a classroom to actually do the work.
"To me it's a win-win situation."
Last year, the Department of Education updated the Ofsted inspection handbook so that schools must have adequate processes for dealing with harmful sexual behaviour,
Despite this, new data shows that teachers and staff still have concerns.
More than a fifth of school staff surveyed do not feel confident in handling reports of sexual harassment, abuse or violence.
36% of staff surveyed do not feel that there is sufficient guidance for schools overall on how to deal with allegations of sexual harassment and violence.
During Safeguarding Awareness Week Tes have been sharing a range of tools and resources with schools, as well as hosting webinars.