How Premier Education keeps your child safe at every club, every day

We know how it is. You’ve been reading the reviews over and over again, and staring at your checkout basket for fifteen minutes. The activities look great, the times work, and you can already picture your child running into the room on Monday morning, fully buzzing about a day of dodgeball, crafts and archery.

But, then comes the question that won’t let you click ‘complete my booking’: Will they actually be safe?

If this sounds familiar, you’re not the only one. Safety is one of the most important parents tell us they think about before booking – more than price, location and whether they need to pack suncream or not. Honestly, you should be asking this question, and you should be able to get a good answer.

So here’s ours. No waffle or corporate paragraph tucked away in the depths of a Terms and Conditions page. This is exactly how we, at Premier Education, keep your child safe at every after-school club, breakfast club, holiday club and wraparound session we run.

So grab a coffee and have a good read.

Our ‘Nil Satis’ promise

Across everything we do, we live by a principle we call ‘Nil Satis’, leaving no stone unturned when it comes to safeguarding.

This principle is the standard every coach, club leader, holiday club manager and head office team member is held to. When it comes to your child’s safety, we don’t just aim for the legal minimum and call it a day. We aim higher, then we check ourselves, then we check ourselves again.

Every coach is DBS-checked, vetted and trained in safeguarding

Let’s start with the people.

Every Premier Education coach and club leader goes through a specific recruitment process before they ever step foot inside a school hall or holiday club venue. That means:

• Enhanced DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks – the highest level of background check available in the UK, including the children’s barred list.
• Specific safeguarding and child protection training is completed before their first session and refreshed regularly throughout their employment.
• Paediatric first aid certification for setting leads, so a qualified first-aider is always on hand for the inevitable grazed knee or “I think I swallowed my tooth” moments.
• Identity and right-to-work verification

Safeguarding training at Premier Education is also ongoing. Every staff member is kept current with the latest statutory guidance, including updates to KCSIE (Keeping Children Safe in Education), the Prevent Duty, and how to spot and respond to concerns about a child’s welfare.

In short: the coach who high-fives your child at drop-off has been more thoroughly checked than most people you’ve ever met. We take “who’s looking after my child?” very, very seriously, because we know you do.

There is always a designated safeguarding lead on site

A designated safeguarding lead is a senior, specially-trained member of staff whose job is to lead on child protection. Every primary school in England has one, and so does every Premier Education setting.

Your DSL is the person who:

• Acts as the first point of contact for any concern about a child’s welfare
• Liaises with parents, schools, and external agencies when needed
• Keeps accurate, confidential records of any safeguarding issues
• Makes referrals to children’s social care, the police or the other agencies where required

And that’s not all. The DSL on site at every club is backed up by our national safeguarding team at head office, including dedicated Deputy DSLs covering sport, extracurricular, holiday clubs and wraparound care. So whichever session your child is a part of, there is an expert overseeing it, and a whole team behind them too.

Ofsted-registered wraparound care you can actually trust

As the largest provider of wraparound care in the UK, you may have already heard of our brilliant wraparound care clubs, available in hundreds of schools across the country to help with rising childcare needs and support busy families.

What you might not know is that our wraparound care provision is Ofsted-registered. This means we’re inspected and held to the standards of England’s official childcare regulator. The same body that inspects your child’s school.

Ofsted registration matters for two reasons. First, it confirms the provision is safe, age-appropriate, and run by qualified staff who follow proper procedures. If we ever fall short, Ofsted will let us know (they really will.)

The second reason is that Ofsted-registered childcare is eligible for Tax-Free Childcare and childcare vouchers, which can take a serious chunk out of the cost. So your child gets a properly regulated environment, and your wallet gets a small but very welcome break. Win-win.

Our password collection system

Every parent knows this feeling – you’re stuck in traffic, the school office isn’t picking up, and you realise your other half is on collection duty today, and you forgot to tell the Premier staff at drop off this morning. Sound familiar?

Here’s how we handle it:

• Every child is signed in by a member of staff on arrival at any activity, and registers are cross-checked with the school office where relevant
• Only the parent or guardian who made the booking can collect the child, unless consent has been given in advance for another named adult
• We operate a ‘Password Collection’ system at every setting. If a different adult is collecting your child, they need to know the collection password you set up at booking. No password, no release. (You can pick anything memorable – a pet’s name, a favourite place, that made-up word your child invented in Reception that nobody else on earth would guess. We just ask you to refresh it every six months.)
• Parents or authorised adults physically sign the child out at collection

And if you’re genuinely delayed? We get it, life happens. Trains break and meetings overrun. We follow a clear uncollected child procedure, working through your emergency contacts and, if needed, escalating to our safeguarding team. No child ever sits unattended waiting for someone to remember them.

At holiday clubs, our coaches meet you at drop-off and give you a direct contact number for pick-up. In line with child protection regulations, parents aren’t permitted to wander into live sessions, which we know can feel a bit odd the first time, but it’s a small thing that makes a big difference to keeping every child secure.

Protection that’s inclusive

Our safeguarding policy at Premier is built on a simple principle: every child has an equal right to protection. Age, disability, gender, race, religion, belief, sex or sexual orientation – none of it changes a child’s right to feel safe at one of our sessions. No matter what.

We also recognise that some children are more vulnerable than others – because of previous experiences, communication needs, dependency levels, or other factors – and we adapt our care accordingly.

Rigorous risk assessments are ingrained in everything we do. Any new activity, or any provision falling outside our standard age range (early years up to age 12), goes through a formal process reviewed at head office before it ever actually runs at a venue. The phrase ‘let’s just give it a go and see what happens’ doesn’t really happen here. We plan, assess and plan again.

An open culture (because procedures only work if people use them)

At Premier, we really take pride in the culture we have built- not only at head office but across all of our settings. Everything we have mentioned above in this blog means nothing unless the staff actually live it, parents actually feel heard, and there’s an easy way to flag anything that doesn’t feel right.

So we’ve made that bit easy. If you ever have a concern about your own child, another child, or anything you’ve seen, heard, or just felt at a Premier Education club, our safeguarding team is here for it. Speak to the staff at the session you child attends, contact the local DSL or contact [email protected]

Every concern is taken seriously, investigated thoroughly, and where appropriate, reported to Ofsted and the relevant child protection agencies.

You don’t have to be certain. You don’t have to have evidence. You don’t have to apologise for “probably overreacting.” If something doesn’t feel right, tell us. Honestly, we’d much rather hear from a parent who turned out to be wrong than miss hearing from one who turned out to be right.

That, more than any policy document, is what a safeguarding culture actually looks like.

Book with confidence