Information for teachers and school staff

This is a dedicated space for teachers and school staff to find everything they need to know about our work in schools. Our safer neighbourhood teams and our youth engagement teams are staffed by both police officers and police community support officers. These deliver our school programme and school engagement.

What is covered in our school programme?

We know how busy the school timetable is so we have developed our school programme to meet the RSE and PSHE curriculum so you can get the biggest benefit when giving up time from the school timetable. We run sessions for primary and secondary schools as well as for colleges and universities and all of our inputs are broken down into key stages to ensure they are suitable for the students we are delivering to. We have an ‘Schools Overview Document’ that you can download which shows all the topics we cover, broken down with additional detail for each key stage.

How do I book a school input?

You can book a school input by contacting your local Youth Engagement Team directly via the email addresses below:

Amber Valley - [email protected]

Chesterfield - [email protected]

Derby North - [email protected]

Derby South - [email protected]

Derby West - [email protected]

Erewash - [email protected]

High Peak - [email protected]

North East -  [email protected]

If you do not know which area your school sits under, you can use our ‘contact us’ form and then follow these instructions:  ‘contact us’/ ‘start form’/ ‘an event or procession’/ ‘ask us to take part in a local event you are planning’/ ‘start’ and then complete the form stating you would like a school input to be delivered at your school. Please provide details of the school input you are interested in.

What if the topic I’m interested in is not on your list?

If a topic you are interested in is not on our list, then it is not currently part of our school programme and our officers/staff will not be able to come into your school to talk about it. This is to ensure a high standard and consistency across our county. If you feel the topic should be one that we should add to our school programme you can email: [email protected] for this to be considered.

I want more than one input, can you just combine them into one?

No, our inputs have been designed to focus on key issues and merging other topics, even if they are similar, would not allow us the time to go into the detail needed to ensure learning and understanding. Our inputs have been developed to encourage reflection and discussions and for that reason we need the lesson time to cover this effectively.

Why are your inputs full lessons, can’t they all be delivered in an assembly?

Our inputs are designed to fill an average slot on the school timetable (between 50mins-1hour) to allow for the topic to be discussed properly, to give young people a space to ask questions and work together to understand the desired outcomes. The reason schools contact us to deliver a topic is usually because it is an issue in their school or it is a wider societal issue that they want to try and address or prevent with their students. Therefore, we owe it to our young people to give them the time they deserve to learn and reflect, rather than speaking at them for a short period of time. Research shows that assembly inputs are not effective in helping students to retain information and key learning and this is why we promote and encourage schools to book our full classroom-based sessions.

What do I need to do to prepare for an input being delivered in my school?

The Effective Working Together guidance is the process we follow when undertaking inputs with schools. This guidance document has been created with the support of partners based on issues raised by schools who invite third party providers in to deliver inputs and workshops. The guidance document has a useful flow chart and checklist of what to consider when inviting someone to come in and deliver an input to your school. We advise all schools to download and review this useful document.

Effective Working Together Guidance

Can I give feedback after an input has been delivered in my school?

Absolutely, we welcome feedback, good or bad, as it helps us to improve our school inputs and our delivery. All school staff will have access to our feedback form, which can only be seen by a central team and not the officer that has been in to deliver the input to your school. The form can be located here: School Feedback on School Inputs by Police

What other school engagements do you do?

As well as delivering school inputs, we also take part in lots of other school engagements to help build trust and confidence in the police and to build better relationships with the young people in our communities. Some examples of our school engagements are:

• Careers fairs
• School drop-ins
• Breaktime/playground engagement
• Parent/carer engagements
• Parents evening drop-ins
• School meetings
• School interventions

To find out more about our youth engagement teams, visit our dedicated page.