The health, wellbeing and safety of our young people is very important to us and one of our school values - HAUORA. We want all of our students to live healthy lives and we will do our best to support them with this.

Although the majority of our students do not vape or use smoking products, since the beginning of this year we have had a number of students at school who are bringing vapes/smoking products to school and using them in and out of the grounds. We wanted to remind our community of our stance on vaping and other smoking products and ask for your support with ensuring our young people are not doing this (during school time but of course we would like to support them to stop altogether).

Our School rules

Vaping or using any smoking product is not allowed for any students while they are in control of the school. This includes:

• on the way to school

• during school hours

• returning home from school

• any time while students are in school uniform

• any school trips.

The law

• It is an offence to sell nicotine vaping products to young people aged under 18.

• From 11 November 2020 people cannot vape in legislated smokefree areas (including their grounds and buildings). These areas will all be smokefree and vape free. This means that all schools are smoke free and this includes vaping.

Education

Our health and PE team look at vaping specifically in year 10 but they are working with us to make sure that they are addressing it in year 9 as well as part of good decision making.

Support

We offer support through our Guidance Counsellors for students who want to give up smoking products. We are also working with someone from Smoking Cessation who we are hoping will support us by working with our young people around giving up any smoking products.

Consequences

We will follow our school procedures if a student is found vaping or with vaping products, including all smoking products, and we thank you for your support. As always we want to work from a health perspective with our students using education and support but our students need to be aware that we will also use our discipline policy for not following our school rules.

If you or your child want to talk to us about how we can support them to not vape or use smoking products then please contact the school guidance counsellors.