General information
Health and safety
Saturday and Weekday Music Centres are based at Havering Sixth Form College, a large site more openly accessible than conventional schools. All students and parents must sign in on arrival and sign out on departure and at all times wear ID issued by the Music Centre Office. Infant school age children should not be left unsupervised and must be escorted to and from lessons.
Please contact the Havering Music School Office if you require additional access, tuition or exam requirements.
Pastoral care and safeguarding
Havering Music School operates the safeguarding procedures of the London Safeguarding Children Board. All staff receive relevant training every two years.
Instrumental tutors can often pick up on pastoral matters that other adults (even parents) may not be aware of, and they treat students sensitively and discreetly.
Any concerns which come to light in a school or college are reported to the school immediately.
If a tutor has a concern at one of our Music Centres or events, he or she will report this to a manager, who will decide whether to make a referral to the London Borough of Havering’s safeguarding team. In some matters we have no discretion and must make a referral. We cannot influence the safeguarding team’s response.
Confidentiality on all pastoral and safeguarding matters is strictly observed between the tutor, the relevant manager and, where necessary, the Music School Principal.
Havering Music School Inclusion Policy
Havering Music Hub is committed to fostering an inclusive environment that provides equal opportunities for all children and young people to engage in high-quality music education. The Inclusion Strategy outlines our approach to support eligible children, promote understanding of inclusion, embed an inclusive culture, allocate adequate resources, and connect with other relevant policies and activities. Our aim is to continuously improve access and opportunity for all, regardless of their background or abilities. Our inclusion lead is Kate Green.
Comments and suggestions
Comments and suggestions to help or improve Havering Music School are welcome. Please contact us via our general e-mail address musicschool@havering.gov.uk or by post to the Music Centre.
Complaints
Occasionally things do go wrong and we can only put them right if we know. If an issue cannot be resolved informally – or if this route is not appropriate – you can write to Karen Tweddle, Principal of Havering Music School, via e-mail or letter. We will tell you if we decide that a different manager should deal with your complaint.
If you prefer, you can log your complaint through Havering Council’s complaints procedure. Details of this are on the Council’s website at:
Most complaints will be referred back to Havering Music School to investigate
Data Privacy Notice
Havering Music School is part of Havering Council and complies with its data privacy policies, which can be found at www.havering.gov.uk under ‘Data and Spending’.
We process your personal data and your children’s data:
- To fulfill our contract with you (e.g. for tuition, ensembles, instrument hire or exam entries);
- To meet legal requirements, including safeguarding;
- With your express consent, to provide you with information about additional opportunities promoted by HMS, by our partners or jointly;
- With your express consent, to create and use audio and visual records of events:
- Please note however that we always video the major concerts in November and June and it is not practical to exclude individual children from the video recording.
We share your personal data with:
- Internally with departments within Havering Council, principally with the Income team, for purposes of billing, revenue collection and account management.
We share your children’s personal data with:
- Our own instrumental/vocal tutors, for purposes of providing music education;
- When relevant, staff and volunteers on trips, for purposes of safeguarding (medical and emergency contact details, which are collected in and destroyed at the end of the trip);
- Exam boards, for purposes of administering exams. Data privacy notices for the exam boards we routinely use are:
https://gb.abrsm.org/en/policies/privacy-policy/
https://www.trinitycollege.com/site/?id=9
https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/about-us/qualification-brands/gdpr.html (GCSE Music)
- Havering College (GCSE Music candidates only), whose data privacy policy is here:
https://www.havering-college.ac.uk/site-policies
- With your express consent, with partners but only when necessary and only when we are satisfied that their own data privacy practices are robust.
We use a third-party system called Paritor Ensemble to process your data and your children’s data. We have contracts with Paritor for the system and for data hosting on servers located in the UK. Information about this can be found at http://www.paritorensemble.com/DataHosting.aspx.
We do not transfer your data outside the UK.
Questions about this notice should be addressed to Karen Tweddle. Complaints may be raised with Karen Tweddle or through Havering’s complaints portal at https://www.havering.gov.uk/complaints.