Head Teacher at Henry Fanshawe School in Dronfield Teresa Roche Head Teacher at Henry Fanshawe School in Dronfield Crime Prevention… A Head Teacher’s Perspective

Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School Police and Crime Commissioner’s School Collaboration

Survey of Students In January 2014, all students on roll at Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School and our 9 primary feeder schools completed a survey asking them what issues concerned them most re: policing and crime within their local area

Alan Charles Visit to DHFS On 27th February 2014 Alan Charles and PC 1376 Waller came into school and met with members of our Student Council, students from our learning support department and from our feeder primary schools. He carried out at Q & A session on the questions that had been raised most frequently during the survey. It was at this visit that he launched the PCC Youth Survey which ran until July 2014. 

In March 2014, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Derbyshire launched a new project for Schools and Colleges across Derbyshire.  The project supported the Police and Crime Plan for Derbyshire and invited a team of young people (11-18 years old) to come up with an idea which has a positive impact on their local area.

DHFS Bid for a Graffiti Wall Students at DHFS put in a bid for £1000 to build a graffiti wall on school site. The wall is to be built where local residents can see it to admire the talents of the artists. The design would be changed to reflect the time of year.

Dronfield Police As part of the bid process students interviewed PC 1376 Waller who told them that there had been incidents in the local area of young people ‘tagging’. Leaving their identity mark in pen or paint in a public area. He advised our students that this is classed as criminal damage. As a result our students had a clean up operation and some of them volunteered and went to the local children's centre and spent the afternoon cleaning graffiti off the building. The students doing the cleaning were not the ones who caused the damage, but they wanted to take a pride in their community and clean it up for local residents.

The cost to the community Our students found out that when there is criminal damage due to graffiti it costs the police to investigate and the local council to clean it up. They felt that if there was a designated area, young people would be less likely to cause damage elsewhere.

Is it Art? Our students questioned if graffiti is art? They felt that some is not e.g. tagging, but when done correctly there is a lot of skill involved and it takes lots of practice and patience to get it right They wanted people to be able to look at graffiti and see that it is a form of art work and just as beautiful as more traditional art works

From this.......... to this

Success! In June 2014 our students were delighted to discover that their bid had been successful and DHFS had been allocated £1000 to build a graffiti wall for students to use in a structured and supervised way.

July 2014

S U M M I T U O Y T H Protection, Prevention, Support collectively delivering effective engagement