North Shropshire school children take part in community safety event
Hundreds of ten-year-olds from North Shropshire primary schools will visit RAF Shawbury this week as part of a community safety event.
The annual, week-long North Shropshire Safety Scene, organised by the West Mercia Constabulary, got under way yesterday and will run until Friday to promote various forms of community safety to youngsters from virtually every primary school in the district. Nearly 630 ten-year-olds from Years 5 and 6 in 20 North Shropshire primary schools will visit the Scene in the sports hangar at RAF Shawbury, near Shrewsbury.
The Safety Scene, masterminded by Market Drayton police officer, DC Glyn Teggin, over ten years ago, uses a theatrical village as the basis for various scenarios to “play act” safety messages to the young schoolchildren. Through his efforts and the support of the local community, the North Shropshire Safety Scene is now firmly established and has provided all types of safety tuition to around 13,000 schoolchildren since its inception.
“We are very pleased to be able to offer our sports hangar for this important facility,” said RAF Shawbury Health and Safety Officer, Mr Andy Parfitt. Andy added, “The hangar is used extensively by our own base personnel and dependants for all manner of sporting activities and for our operational fitness tests and is an ideal environment for the Safety Scene sessions.”
The children will see 15 different safety scenarios including drugs and stranger danger by the police, fire safety and hoax calls from Shropshire Fire and Rescue, water safety from British Waterways, a bonfire/fireworks safety scene put on by local Rotary clubs, safety in the kitchen and home safety, dog wardens, using the emergency services, first aid, building site safety, road and farm safety and a vehicle stopping distance presentation by the Road Safety Partnership. There was also an Internet awareness presentation by the Community Support Police and a criminal damage presentation which explained how children should contact the emergency services. The sessions are running from 0930am to 12pm and 12.45pm to 2.20pm, Tuesday to Friday.
DC Teggin said: “The project deals with the day to day dangers young children of North Shropshire are likely to come into contact with during their daily lives.
“It gives them a hands-on opportunity to learn about these dangers in a safe environment. Use of the theatrical village also brings an element of fun to the serious messages we are putting across”.
Secondary schools in the district also use the Scene to teach their Year 9, 14-year-old pupils about dangers, and to consolidate the safety lessons learnt when they attended as primary schoolchildren.
