Parent / Carer Update – Monday 18th June

WCSA Health & Safety by Mr. Bird
Assistant Business Manager

Now, for those who have not already given up reading after seeing the words ‘Health and Safety’, thank you! 

As you would naturally expect, Health and Safety is of the upmost importance at WCSA. I am delighted that as it’s a key part of my role (along with every member of staff) – it allows me to make a difference every day to WCSA students and staff.

Contrary to popular belief, Health and Safety is not necessarily boring or used as an obstacle to prevent things from being done; at WCSA we use it to both enhance the students’ learning experience and to increase awareness or skills that benefit students when outside of school. Let me explain by touching on a few things which I have been involved in this week…

Emergency Planning – Although the school has fire and closure drills, events last Friday reinforced why we plan for such emergencies, as we were on hand to accommodate and assist all Mead Vale Primary School staff and students following an evacuation of their school because of a gas leak.

Thank you so much for today, you were both amazing and supportive. Mead Vale is fortunate to have such caring and dynamic neighbours. I appreciate you had exams on and yet you were still so accommodating.  Please can you also pass on my thanks to all the staff that helped and managed the incident seamlessly and with such professionalism, a real credit to you!

Kind regards
Jason

Jason M Nicolaides
Headteacher
Mead Vale Primary School

School Trips – We are lucky to have so many passionate and committed staff at WCSA, as there is a lot of work that goes into ensuring school trips / events are successful, and students get the most from every one. From a Health and Safety perspective I am involved at an early stage so that arrangements and documentation is in place to make them as safe as it is practicably possible. For those trips which are regarded as a higher risk (i.e. abroad, residential, higher risk activity) an external consultant is also involved in this process. I am pleased to say that WCSA organises lots of trips, and although there are too many to mention, they include; Thorpe Park, School Prom, Yeovil Air museum, French trip (Paris), careers and college tasters, skiing (Italy) and Geography (Iceland). 

Sustainable Travel – Part of this has included encouraging students to cycle / scooter to the Academy, as this has health benefits as well as environmental ones. Last term the school allocated another cycle / scooter shelter for student use and arranged for bike mechanics to service student bicycles for free. This week, continuing on the safer cycling theme, WCSA rewarded all students who were seen to be wearing a cycle helmet on a particular day, with a £10 shopping voucher – hopefully this will encourage others to do the same. Here is a picture of just some of them.

Although this update is brief I hope this goes someway to reassure you that all WCSA staff takes Health and Safety very seriously.

If you do have any concerns, then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Mr. Bird
Assistant Business Manager