Schools and Daily Acts of Collective Worship

Each pupil must take part in a daily act of collective worship unless they have been withdrawn by their parents.

Our Church of England schools must provide collective worship in accordance with the tenets and practices of the Church of England.

Our community schools (schools that do not have a religious designation) must provide collective worship that is wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. A school can reflect the religious backgrounds represented in its community, as long as the majority of provision is broadly Christian.

Religious Education

Our schools follow the Devon and Torbay agreed RE syllabus.

The right to withdraw from RE or Collective Worship

Parents have the right to withdraw their children from religious education and/or collective worship, and should contact the Head of School to ask for this. Parents will be invited to a meeting to discuss withdrawal and to explore how their concern may be met. Parents are not obliged to attend such a meeting in which case withdrawal shall be put into effect immediately and the school will notify the parent.

Schools Advisory Service offer physical and mental health support to all First Federation Trust staff. The service is confidential and free of charge for staff and can be used for a wide range of concerns. More information can be found in the brochure at the bottom of the page.

You may also want to have a look at policies in our safeguarding section, such as anti-bullying and anti-racism, which are available on our website. And/or the policies in our SEND and medical section, which is are available on our website.

Gender
You can find our report on our gender pay gap here.

Our data protection policy contains information about to how make Freedom of Information requests and the deadline to respond to those. This policy can be found on our website here.

Our Pupil Attendance Policy template includes information about how we promote attendance, when to keep your child at home due to illness and holidays during term time. 

Please refer to your child's school website for the policy for your child's school. 

In order to make informed decisions about their child’s fitness for attending school, parents are encouraged to refer to the NHS guidance ‘Is My Child Too Ill for School?’.

Our schools develop their own policy to suit their context and pupils, based on the Trust template which can be found below. 

The individual school policy can be found on their website. 

In primary schools, parents can withdraw their child from sex education beyond the national curriculum for science, but cannot withdraw them from Relationships or Health education.

Whistleblowing is the disclosure of information which relates to suspected wrongdoing or dangers at work.

The aims of the First Federation Trust Whistleblowing Policy are:

1. To encourage staff to report suspected wrongdoing as soon as possible, in the knowledge that their concerns will be taken seriously and investigated as appropriate, and that their confidentiality will be respected.
2. To provide staff with guidance on how to raise concerns.
3. To reassure staff that they should be able to raise genuine concerns without fear of reprisals, even if they turn out to be mistaken