Working with visitors

Visitors, such as health professionals and agencies, have much to contribute to the SRE programme and should be part of planned provision. They should work within the school SRE policy and schools should ensure that they fit in with the school values and ethos.

Using visitors and developing visitor guidelines

The Education Act 1996 aims to ensure that children are not presented with just one side of a political or controversial issue by their teachers. Therefore, it is important that teachers "ensure that pupils have access to balanced information and differing views on which they can clarify their own opinions and views, including contributions made by visitors to the classroom…" Citizenship at Key Stages 3 and 4, initial guidance for schools, QCA 2000. (Since publishing this document the QCA has become the QCDA.)

Visitors to SRE lessons are appreciated by young people and teachers because they can:

• form a link to the community and make a service more accessible (a visitor from a sexual health service can provide a friendly face and reassurances about confidentiality)
• offer specialist knowledge, experience and resources (a parent and baby can offer primary school children insight into the needs of newborns)
• build relationships between services and young people (such as between the youth service and young people)
• help young people to learn from the experiences of others (for example Peer Education)
• provide curriculum enrichment (for example Theatre in Education).

Visitors should always complement the current programme and should never substitute or replace teacher-led education. It is the responsibility of the PSHE co-ordinator and teacher to ensure that any visitor session is part of a planned programme with adequate preparation and follow-up. Teachers need to be clear about the content of a visitor’s presentation, checking its accuracy, value base and fit with the overall curriculum.
 
It is good practice for the teacher to remain in the classroom for a visitor session. Prior to the session, the respective roles of the teacher, teaching assistants and visitor should be negotiated and clear decisions made about delivery and discipline. The visitor may feel able and willing to lead the whole lesson with the teacher either participating or remaining silent. Alternatively the lesson may be delivered jointly with the visitor providing the specialist information.
 
Visitors should work within existing school policies such as the school SRE policy, confidentiality, safeguarding and equal opportunities policies, as appropriate, and the values of the school. They should also work within the limits of teacher confidentiality and the school confidentiality policy. The SRE guidance document (DfEE 0116/2000) states that ‘in line with best practice guidance …[visitors] will seek to protect privacy and prevent inappropriate personal disclosures in a classroom setting’.

Some visitors, such as those from a local youth advice service, may be able to offer confidentiality within their service and so can remind pupils and students when and how these and other appropriate services can be accessed. In some cases, particularly when a sensitive issue such as contraception or abortion has been discussed, the visitor may be able to offer some one-to-one support to students after the lesson. Confidentiality and child protection issues for this would need to be explored with the PSHE co-ordinator and/or a member of staff with responsibility for pastoral issues before this additional service is offered to the students.

Criminal Records Bureau and Vetting and Barring

It is the school’s responsibility to ensure that, where appropriate, visitors in school have been subject to a police check. An enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check should always be made where there is a substantial likelihood of a visitor undertaking one-to-one work with a student. The Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) was set up in response to the Bichard Inquiry which recommended that there be a single agency to vet all individuals who want to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults and to bar unsuitable people from doing so. The ISA has produced some factsheets about itself, vetting and barring, and its relationship with the CRB. The ISA's Vetting and Barring Scheme came into effect on 12th October 2009, however, in June 2010 the coalition government said it aims to "review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels"; go to the ISA's website for updates on developments.

In a pastoral setting, some visitors can:

• offer young people confidential support and advice through drop-in sessions
• support teachers, staff, parents and carers with information and advice, for example by attending parents' meetings
• offer targeted small group work.

School nurses, doctors, personal advisors and youth workers can be used on site to provide a confidential one-to-one opportunity for young people to discuss issues that may be of concern. These drop-ins can provide information and the opportunity to talk, and can signpost young people to other appropriate services. Outside of teaching, health professionals and other visitors are bound by their own codes of conduct. For example, when a school nurse is in a consultation with an individual student, he or she will follow his or her own guidance on confidentiality. Parents and carers should be informed of the confidentiality policy.

Parents and carers should be informed about the use of visitors in schools.

The success of any visit depends upon careful planning and liaison between the visitor and the school. Pupils can be involved in planning the visit and preparing for it by considering how to make the visitor welcome, and by thinking about the purpose of the visit and what they might expect to get from the session, as well as preparing questions. Pupils, teachers and visitors should all evaluate the visit(s) and evaluation should be linked to the learning outcomes for the session.

Download guidance from the Sex Education Forum on External visitors and SRE, published March 2010.