Schools and Safeguarding: Thinking Through Spaces and Contexts of Vulnerability and Harm

What makes a child vulnerable to harm? What is it about how we conceptualise vulnerability that draws us to thinking about individual traits and characteristics rather than broader systems and structures of power? In this chapter, we consider these questions by exploring student experiences of vulnerability in schools. Drawing on a case study of two student experiences of harmful sexual behaviour, we explore harm, abuse and vulnerability as spatial. In doing so, we present school responses to forms of harm, drawing a division between responses which focus on vulnerable individuals and the potential of responses which target the systemic, spatial and contextual causes of harm. We conclude by offering Contextual Safeguarding as an approach for addressing the social conditions of harm.