Keeping Your Children Safe

Your child’s safety and security is SPARK Schools’ first priority! Our school operations, policies, and procedures and designed to ensure that your SPARK scholar has a safe and positive experience each day at school. From the moment your child arrives at school, we make safety our top concern.  Our arrival procedures ensure the safety of our SPARK scholars and staff while ensuring we are respectful of our neighbours and the surrounding community.  Scholars may arrive on school grounds from 6:45 am when a member of our staff will greet your car or transport vehicle, open the door, and welcome your child individually onto school grounds.  Our scholars enjoy supervised play time until Sparks Fly, our daily morning assembly begins at 7:45 am.
 
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Throughout the school day, our gates remain locked and our entrances are monitored by security guards. Our guards sign in each individual visitor or guest onto the property.  No visitors may enter the school grounds without signing in and wearing a guest lanyard. Also, visitors may not visit any classrooms or learning spaces unaccompanied. The same applies to extracurricular providers who facilitate after school sport and cultural activities, they are vetted and monitored to ensure the safety of our scholars.
All scholars remain inside the school grounds until they are dismissed, SPARK Schools views this as our responsibility for when your child is in our care.
Finally, our dismissal procedures are designed with scholar safety at the core. At the beginning of the school year, all parents receive a placard with the name and grade of their scholar. This placard must be displayed on the vehicle dashboard upon arriving at SPARK Schools. Scholars will only be released when a placard is produced. Anyone seeking to fetch a child who does not have a placard must show their ID at reception before approval is given for the child’s dismissal. This approval includes SPARK staff phoning the scholar’s parent to verify the person requesting to fetch the scholar.

Safety and security is a team effort, and to achieve this we need your help!

Here are a few things you can do to help us keep your child safe:

  • Carefully review the Scholar Health and Safety section of our Scholar and Family Handbook to learn more about our policies on Child Protection, Attendance, and Illness and First Aid.
  • Abide by our arrival and dismissal procedures, arriving at school no earlier than 6:45 am as well as practising safe driving techniques during dismissal to allow us to efficiently and safely dismiss all scholars.
  • If you choose to make use of an independent transport supplier, please ensure that the transport supplier complies with the norms and standards of learner transport according to the National Transport Policy.  SPARK Schools does not provide, promote, or endorse any transport and should a parent or guardian choose a transport supplier, they do so at their own risk.
  • Speak to your child about “stranger danger” and encourage them not to get into an unfamiliar vehicle or to travel with an unfamiliar driver.  Ask them to alert a staff member during dismissal if they do not know the person fetching them.  Unfortunately, attempted abductions are on the rise in South Africa, and the best line of defence is to make your child aware of the danger and their own surroundings.

We are committed to partnering with you to ensure your child’s health and safety.  We ask that you assist us by upholding and supporting the school’s mission, policies, and expectations with your scholar, as well.
 

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