Personal safety
It is important that young people increasingly take responsibility for their own safety. As educators, we need to ensure that young people have the opportunity to be able to plan appropriate safety strategies and to explore decisions relating to safety in a supportive environment.
The teaching of personal safety plans builds on many curriculum and whole-school initiatives and helps students to identify their skills and attributes and to plan strategies that will support them in difficult situations.
Personal safety planning is important.
- We all need to take responsibility for our own safety.
- We all have different strengths and expectations and we will respond differently to situations.
- We are the “experts” on our own lives and usually know what is likely, and what feels most comfortable to do.
- If we generate solutions to problems and have rehearsed behaviours to counteract these, we are more likely to use them in real-life situations than if we have to make them up on the spot.
- Planning gives us a greater sense of control of the situation and our lives, and lowers general feelings of anxiety.
- Planning enables us to be “cool, calm and collected” and so have more chance of making the best decisions in difficult situations.
This section explores information and ideas about planning for personal safety as part of Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE). It contains two sections:
Background information
Students' voices: What young people say about personal safety.
- Where do young people go in their free time?
- How do young people make decisions about places to go?
- What are the issues and concerns that young people have in relation to personal safety?
- How do young people deal with these issues and concerns?
- What strategies do young people use to keep themselves safe?
- What signals or behaviours alert young people that something may be unsafe?
- Who do young people listen to?
- When do young people ask for help?
- How does gender impact on issues relating to personal safety of young people?
- Using student voices in the classroom.
Teaching and learning activities
This section provides teaching and learning activities that support the teaching of personal safety as part of PDHPE in Stage 5. Each lesson is made up of a number of teaching and learning activities that teachers can use in the classroom. There is no expectation that all activities will be taught in each lesson. Teachers can pick and choose those activities which which will best suit the needs and interests of the students and school community.There are however, some basic understandings that students need to develop in order for them to develop their safety plans. These are covered in Lessons 1-4. The lesson, Identifying the state of play, will help teachers identify "where the students are" in terms of their personal safety.
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