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Christopher Cloke,
Head of
the Child Protection Unit of the NSPCC,
described the change in responsibility for
safe-guarding and promoting the welfare of children
and young people, indicating that it was not just
the traditional agencies but essentially everyone
working with children and young people and
the wider public.
People are still reluctant to be involved,
however, and in cases of child sexual abuse the
problem was that most of the children did not tell
anyone about the abuse at the time.
Christopher Cloke detailed the FULL STOP
campaign, – to mobilise everyone to take action to
end cruelty: to give children the help, support and
environment they need to stay safe from cruelty: and
to find ways of working with communities to keep
children safe.
Christopher finished by saying 'Staying Safe'
is vital for children and young people’s happiness,
health, well being and achievement.
Unless they are safe, children cannot
thrive”.
Mrs Valerie May,
Head of
the New School
at West Heath, Sevenoaks, for children with
special needs, gave an inspirational talk.
The speaker believed strongly that all
special needs children, even those with most
unfortunate backgrounds – bullying in regular
schools, unfortunate family circumstances, personal
difficulties with physical and mental health
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– needed not only a stable, caring environment,
but also the best possible education leading
to the acquisition of nationally recognised
qualifications.
No child at West Heath now leaves without at
least one such qualification.
Mrs May did not claim 100% success with her
pupils but an impressively high percentage have been
able to enter into and function in ordinary society
after their time at the school.
A moving talk followed by a former pupil who
spoke of her complete lack of social and educational
skills before entering the school, but who had
completed qualifications and was now obviously a
normal, articulate and lovely young women.
Professor Christopher Woodhead, Professor of
Education at the University of Buckingham,
said that we now have one in five children who is
unable to read and write well enough for secondary
school.
He advanced his views on some reasons for
this: a political view in which equal opportunity
equates with equal outcome and which does not give
sufficient weight to children needing different
types of education e.g. academic c.f. arts based: an
over-emphasis on teaching children skills as opposed
to knowledge based education: teachers leaving the
profession because of their general dissatisfaction
with it.
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