Is Software like PCE, eSafe, Securus a Legal Requirement?

[farquea]

I wondered if someone could clear this up. We currently run Policy Central Enterprise but it still causes crashes in IE7 and im basically getting sick of the thing. Rather than looking at the alternatives (i only know of eSafe and Securus) i would be all for getting rid of the entire thing.

I spoke to my LA and they advised me against not having the software as it would affect our Ofsted reports among other things. However as they were trying to push their product, Securus onto me at the time, im not sure if i completel;y believe them.

So does anyone know, is it a legal requirement to have it and if not are there any definiate disadvantages we will put oursevles at as a school if we were to get rid of it?

[pete]

IIRC (and I'm paraphrasing wildly) you have to be able to show you're taking the subject matter (keeping kids safe) seriously. How you do that is down to the individual school. Software like Securus etc is one way of helping* to show you're doing so.

*Having software like Securus and not monitoring/ignoring the alerts would get you no points and (hopefully) Ofsted would ask follow-up questions rather than just ticking a checkbox.