ABSTRACT
This book helps to meet the challenges faced by schools and their safeguarding duties in the 21st century. Our children are regularly exposed to news stories and events that may instigate feelings of uncertainty and fear, and schools must be confident in the narrative they are promoting. How do we respond to an eight year old in 2017 questioning why a man killed twenty-three people at a concert in Manchester, or why another man killed five people on Westminster Bridge, drove a lorry into crowds in Nice or drove a van into a group of worshipers outside a mosque in London? Following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015 a child asked me in a Year 5 assembly, “Why do the terrorists do this? Why do they kill people?” Children hear these news stories and are searching for answers to make sense of the world. We cannot shield children or wrap them in cotton wool, nor can we leave their conclusions to chance; rather schools need to be confident in providing clear but age-appropriate responses to those questions. A carefully nurtured school ethos can enable news events to be discussed within the confines of a safe school environment, but schools need to create that safe and secure ethos. In this environment, dialogue is encouraged and a clear narrative is developed.
