Safety

Safeguarding

The ISE places our students’ safety and well-being as a high priority, and we have a responsibility to ensure our students’ rights and their best interests are met. We will act whenever safeguarding issues have been identified or suspected. We also believe it is important to empower and educate our students on their rights, personal safety and steps they can take if there is a problem.

We ensure that all ISE staff are regularly informed about safeguarding matters and undergo annual child protection for international schools training. All adults who are employed, volunteers or individuals who are regularly on the school campus must go through a criminal check (VOG – verklaring omtrent het gedrag).

The ISE is a Dutch international school and therefore must adhere to legal expectations in the Netherlands. We also adhere to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) . This is a legally-binding international agreement setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of every child, regardless of their race, religion or abilities.

Further details about the ISE Child Protection and Safeguarding policy can be found here and is available on the school website.

Anti-bullying policy

Every child has the right to develop and learn in a safe school environment. The school strives to ensure a safe school environment for all its students and to support this a policy is developed which focuses on prevention, identifying, immediate action and follow up in situations regarding bullying.

Any identification of bullying situations should be immediately reported to the year tutor, a member of the Student Team or a trusted member of staff.

General Points

• Anti-Bullying units are part of the Year Tutor (YT) lessons for all classes.
• The YT discusses general rules at the beginning of the school year. These include the specific rules regarding bullying and teasing; bullying should always be reported and be considered offering help rather than telling tales.
• Documentation of all incidents and dealings with bullying will be kept in the student records in the Student Team and in the YT file.
• The approach of the ISE in a suspected incident, involves members of staff (including teachers, YT, Student Team members, Learning Support Department, parents, bully, victim, followers and silent bystanders.
• Parents who report bullying will be taken seriously. The school will work with the parents on how to best solve a situation of bullying. This includes providing advice and potential referrals to external specialists.
• When repeated behaviours are observed involving the same student, the leadership team is informed and disciplinary measures are discussed. These may include internal or external suspension.

Action Plan Bullying including Peer to Peer Abuse

Every report of bullying should be taken seriously

Step 1:   Every student has the right and the duty to report a bullying situation to the YT, the Student Team staff, or a trusted member of staff. During this meeting the adult will aim to clarify the situation as much as possible.

Step 2:   The situation will be brought to the YT, who will bring this to the YT meeting. Strategies will be discussed and determined. These include meetings and processes with the victim, the bully, the followers, the silent bystanders and parents. The YT, members of the Student Team and/or the Learning Support Department

Step 3:   Monitoring of behaviour of the students involved will continue for a substantial period. As a result, disciplinary measures may be put into place should behaviours not stop.

Roles and Responsibilities

Subject Teachers:

• To monitor behaviours of all students in their class
• To report issues to the YT, a member of the Student Team or Learning Support Department
• When approached by a student to have the initial meeting directly or as soon as possible, in this meeting they will aim to clarify the situation and to ensure the reporter of the issue that measures will be taken and support is available.

Year Tutor:

• To monitor behaviours of all students in their class(es).
  To address the topic of  bullying during YT lessons ; taught within YT curriculum
• When the YT is approached by a student, (s)he will have the initial meeting directly or as soon as possible. In this meeting they will aim to clarify the situation and ensure the reporter of the issue that measures will be taken and support is available.
• To bring bullying issues to the YT meetings. In an acute situation seek support from a member of the Student Team or the Learning Support Department
• When necessary the YT will explicitly work with their group on bullying. The approach will include the role of the bully, the victim, the followers, and the silent bystanders.
• To keep a log of all bullying situations, to be kept in the YT records.
• Members of Student Team and/or Learning Support Department
• Support the discussions and determining of strategies
• Support meetings with students, groups, parents and/or other members of staff
• Execute interventions (e.g. counselling) with individual students involved
• Keep records of interventions and their progress in the Support Department records
• Report back to the YT (meeting)

Prevention of Unwanted Sexual Advances

In accordance with its aims and objectives, the school considers its task to oppose any form of discrimination and intimidation, including unwanted sexual advances. It is desirable that there exists a learning and working atmosphere within the school such that neither students nor members of personnel will tolerate unwanted sexual advances. In order to create such an atmosphere the school has produced a code of conduct concerning the interaction between students, between members of personnel, and between students and personnel.

Evacuation Procedure

The school has an evacuation plan and trained staff to ensure safety procedures are met. Each year the school runs staff training and evacuation drills, Students are made aware of evacuation procedures through their year tutors and through partaking in regulated evacuation drills.

Details about the ISE Evacuation plan  available on the school website.

Nut free school

The ISE is a nut free school. Within our community we have several students, and staff who suffer from nut allergies including some with extremely severe, potentially life threatening allergy. We ask that our community pay particular attention to the food and snacks they bring to school. We ask to refrain from food products such as peanut butter, Nutella, hazelnut pastes and foods containing nuts like nut chocolate bars or candy and cookies containing nuts. We ask that parents discuss this matter with their child so they understand and can be supportive of this decision.

Privacy and Student Photographs

Photographs of students will only be used with consent from parents and/or students in line with general Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations. GDPR requires all organisations within the EU to provide even greater protection, in particular, on how the school processes personal data such as the photos and videos of students. The school is required by law to ask permission from the legal representatives of a student under the age of 16 for the use of visual material for non-educational purposes such as if we wanted to share photos of a school trip online, on Whatsapp or in our newsletters. If a student is aged 16 or older they have the right to give their own permission.

Visual material for non-educational purposes is based on the following principles:

1. Only teachers or employees of the school should take photographs or film students during lessons in the classroom.
2. If a third party comes into school to video or take photographs, they will have to sign a contract with us which states that they will conform to the GDPR requirements.

Video and photographic recordings are vitally important learning and communication tools for our school. They enable teachers to provide feedback to students, to explain concepts, or to provide students with opportunities to develop their own creativity. They also are used to share with others our approach to teaching and the extremely diverse range of extracurricular activities, school trips and other special activities that are offered to ISE students.  No permission is required for using such visual imagery for exclusively educational reasons.

The ISE uses G Suite for Education. G Suite for Education is a set of education productivity tools from Google including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Classroom and more, used by tens of millions of students and teachers around the world. At the ISE, students will use their G Suite accounts to complete assignments, communicate with their teachers, sign in to their Chromebooks, and learn 21st-century digital citizenship skills. The school, through the permission form at the start of the year, seeks permission from parents  to provide and manage a G Suite for Education account for their child(ren).

Teachers with class lists that include student photographs, may have access to these in their own classroom. However, these lists should not be distributed to others, and the teacher should restrict access to this material.

In line with GDPR, we have a Data Protection Officer in place. This person creates policies and procedures that will ensure the school (i) only record and use such visual imagery that is necessary, (ii) only use them for the purpose we initially planned, (iii) restrict access to these recordings, and (iv) delete them after a certain period.

At the start of each new school year, parents and students over 16 years are sent a permission form where they can give or withhold permission for their child(ren)’s for the following circumstances:

• Permission to use recognisable non-educational photos or videos (including live streaming) of their child(ren) in printed material of the school, on photo collages in the school, in printed materials of SILFO, on public websites of the school, on social media accounts of the school.
• Permission to use the full name of the students in relation to recognisable non-educational photos or videos (including live streaming) of their child(ren) in printed material of the school, on photo collages in the school, in printed materials of SILFO, on public websites of the school, on social media accounts of the school.
• Permission to share the student’s name with parents for a class list
• Permission to use student’s name for newsletter, year books and weekly activities
• Permissions for contact information to be shared with the class parent
• Permission for the ISE to create/maintain a G Suite for Education account for the student
• Permission for the ISE to maintain a Toddle (teaching and learning platform used by the school) account

We have a duty of care to ensure all students feel safe and secure while on school premises. Thus, our school should never be considered as a public place that everyone has the right to access, but rather we can, and will, restrict access to certain people under certain conditions. We understand that some parents will want to take video and photographs of their children during special events, and there is no way practically that we can monitor such photography. On the other hand there may be some children and parents who may not want other parents or students to take pictures of their child or themselves. Thus, we ask parents and students to be cautious about making and publishing any photograph.  Furthermore, if image material is copied by parents or students from the secure part of the school website or if the parent/student takes such video or photographs themselves during one of these special school events, and then they share this material via social media, this is no longer the responsibility of the school. The parent or student who does this becomes responsible. Therefore parents are asked to  take great care when distributing such material.