22-28 MAY 2023

Safeguarding Awareness Week 2023

Thanks you to everyone who joined in our second Safeguarding Awareness Week and helped to inspire children and young people everywhere to SPEAK, SHOUT, SHARE and open up about the safeguarding issues affecting them.

Encouraging children and young people to talk to a trusted adult in school is an essential part of a good safeguarding strategy. But how can you ensure your students know who to speak to and feel confident in doing so? And how do you make sure your colleagues know what to do when a child does confide in them?

Watch our free Live Lesson with NSPCC, download our classroom resources, explore our useful blogs and more, to help keep everybody in your school safe.

speak.shout.share

What is Safeguarding Awareness Week?

Safeguarding Awareness Week is an annual event where we come together to explore what it means to feel safe.

Our pastoral and safeguarding lead Dawn Jotham explains: 

“Safeguarding is an ongoing priority in schools. Everyone in a school must act to protect those in their community. By running an awareness week, we are supporting schools as they continue in those endeavours throughout the academic year and beyond.  

“We use the week to give access to the very latest insight and analysis, to discuss with teaching and leadership staff on the ground how they are promoting safeguarding in their schools and deliver a range of tools for schools to use every day.” 

If you feel concerned about something, who would you turn to?

We asked people to tell us who they talk to when they need some support or advice. From friends, partners and parents to pet dogs, here's what they said.

Key findings from our 2023 Safeguarding Awareness Week survey

We asked school staff to share their thoughts on the state of safeguarding in their school today, here's what they said:

  • 73% of school staff feel there are more safeguarding concerns raised now than this time last year

    #SafeguardingAwarenessWeek

  • 20% of school staff don't think pupils feel confident reporting concerns to a member of school staff

    #SafeguardingAwarenessWeek

  • 39% of school staff don't feel that there is sufficient guidance on how to deal with allegations of sexual harassment and violence

    #SafeguardingAwarenessWeek

  • 25% school staff don't think pupils feel safe at their school.

    #SafeguardingAwarenessWeek

Watch our free Live Lesson with NSPCC

Learn how children can stay safe in this special Safeguarding Awareness Week PSHE lesson for KS2 classes. Through a series of activities, pupils will learn about the rights children have and the support available to them, think about who their safe adults are and explore how to develop healthy relationships.

Watch Live Lesson
Safeguarding Awareness Week 2023-Live lesson image

Download your worksheets and classroom poster

These PDF worksheets have been designed to help students think about the people in their lives they could speak to and confide in. You can also put this informative poster up in your classroom or corridors. Fill in the name of your safeguarding lead to remind students who they can turn to if they're worried about something that's happening to them or someone else.

Previous Safeguarding Awareness Week themes

2022 - Everyone has a right to feel safe

Following reports in the rise of sexual harassment in schools, our first safeguarding awareness week examined what it means to feel safe and what schools can do to protect all their students.

See how we raised awareness during the week, watch recordings of our free webinars with leading experts, view the results of our safeguarding week survey, download our classroom activity sheet, access resources from our safeguarding experts, and more, by visiting our Safeguarding Awareness Week 2022 page.

Get advice and resources
Tes Safeguarding Awareness Week - Blog Post image

Useful blogs and resources

  • Why Important Blog Image

    Why is safeguarding so important in schools?

    Learn more about the importance of safeguarding in schools and the various ways in which it can help to protect and support the school community.

    Read more Read more
  • Need to remain compliant Blog Image

    Safeguarding: What do I need to do to remain compliant?

    Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families and carers has a role to play. Discover the different roles and responsibilities in schools.

    Read more Read more
  • Monitor Safeguarding Blog Image

    How do you monitor safeguarding concerns?

    Find out how school staff can easily report and monitor safeguarding concerns, and evidence compliance with our reporting software Safeguard my School.

    Read more Read more
  • 7 key safeguarding concerns

    Free guide:7 key safeguarding concerns for schools right now

    Download our free guide to ensure that all staff are up to date with the essential safeguarding information they need to protect all your students.

    Read more Read more

Keep all your students safe with our safeguarding tools

  • Tes Safeguarding LP Hero Group image

    Safeguarding training

    Keep your entire school community up to date with the latest safeguarding knowledge with unlimited access to over 80 expert-written online training courses in safeguarding, compliance, health and safety, and wellbeing.

    Read more Read more
  • Tes Safeguarding LP Hero Image

    Safeguarding reporting

    Enable staff to easily report and monitor safeguarding concerns, ensure compliance with current legislation and provide evidence for inspections with our safeguarding reporting software Safeguard my School.

    Read more Read more
  • The Safeguarding Company logo

    The Safeguarding Company

    Prevent and reduce abuse, harm and neglect, and protect the wellbeing of children and adults with our end-to-end range of innovative and powerful safeguarding tools from The Safeguarding Company, now part of the Tes family.

    Read more Read more