Safety & Well-being

Safeguarding at HIS

The protection and safeguarding of our students is of the greatest importance, and accordingly, HIS follows a detailed set of safeguarding and child protection protocols.

These policies are based on the Council of International Schools (CIS) International Taskforce for Child Protection (ITFCP) recommendations and comply with the Child Welfare Act 1947 (rev. 2016), Child Abuse Protection Act 2000 and the Japanese Civil Code Article 1.

We define safeguarding as actions taken to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm. Specifically, safeguarding means:

  1. Protecting children from abuse and maltreatment

  2. Preventing harm to children’s health or development

  3. Ensuring children grow up with the provision of safe and effective care

  4. Taking action to enable all children and young people to have the best outcomes.

  • Safeguarding is a responsibility of all staff and Board members at HIS, all of whom receive annual training on best safeguarding practices. Should anyone have a safeguarding concern at any point, please contact one of the following people:

  • We love welcoming visitors to our campus, and including current families, prospective students and their families, and educators interested in our methods. In order to do this while protecting the safety of our community, we ask for visitors to follow these guidelines:

    • Please do not take photographs or videos of students

    • Only use the bathrooms designated for staff or adults

    • Please sign in when entering all buildings, and clearly wear the visitor badge and lanyard which will be provided to you after sign-in

  • A key element of our safeguarding approach is safe recruitment strategies, meaning that we carefully screen applicants to our open positions. This includes multiple reference checks and a comprehensive, global background check process. In addition, all staff are required to agree to our Staff Code of Conduct as a condition of employment, which outlines detailed safeguarding practices and protocols.

Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

At Hakuba International School, we actively seek, welcome, and celebrate diversity in its many forms.

We see diversity as an expression of human richness, a critical ingredient for an excellent education, and a source of great strength. As we discover each other and adapt to each other’s uniqueness, we become wiser, more capable, and more ready for the complexity of our world.

As one element of this policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, national or ethnic origin, disability, religion, family structure, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression. And we recognize that avoiding discrimination is only the first step toward a more equitable and inclusive world.

We live in a world in which systems of oppression, marginalisation, and inequity are all around us, and we know that it takes careful choices and hard work to disrupt these systems. We approach this in part through our inquiry-based and project-based classes, which provide chances to study systemic inequities and to understand and appreciate human differences. We also use the tools of systems thinking, through a school-wide engagement with MIT’s Compassionate Systems Framework program, to help students and adults understand the systems we find ourselves in and learn how to change them.

Our central question as a school is: What kind of education enables people and the planet to flourish? We believe that seeking and celebrating diversity, creating a safe and inclusive community, and fighting for greater equity in the world are essential steps toward this vision of human and environmental flourishing.