ICT Safeguarding Help

[maxrebo]

Hi,

Several months into this job and it seems that the IT side of the Safeguarding in school is a bit of a mess, or in some areas non existent.

 

Can anyone send me a checklist or refer me to online guidance so I can crosss reference where we are and what we need to update?

 

Thanks in advance.

[elsiegee40]

Take a look at our eSafety forum. There’s plenty in there

[simpsonj]

The LGfL Online Safety Audit could be a good start

[Dos_Box]

Moving to Esafety forum.

[maxrebo]

Thanks for the info.

 

No one seems to know who the Esafety officer is in our school....is this a mandatory requirement?

[PrimaryNetMan]

If you feel there are real safeguarding issues with the IT setup then you should be making your DSL aware as a priority.

[elsiegee40]

Thanks for the info.

 

No one seems to know who the Esafety officer is in our school....is this a mandatory requirement?

 

No it isn’t. Few schools have an esafety officer. The lady who posts as @esafety_officer on EduGeek works for Kent County Council

 

ESafety is part of Safeguarding so whoever is the lead for that in your school is also the lead for eSafety too.

 

As everyone should know in your school, Safeguarding is the responsibility of all adults in the school… not just the teachers or the Safeguarding lead.

 

Many schools tried (try?) to dump eSafety on the IT department, but our part in the process is small. It should be part of day to day conversation with the students about how they use devices both in school and out of school and not saved up for one day/week a year.

[esafety_officer]

Thanks for the tag and apologies for a delayed response

 

I'll echo this point - whilst all staff have responsibility, the overall lead responsibility sits with your DSL. The statutory safeguarding guidance for schools/colleges, Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) makes this very clear. In fact "esafety" as a term has been pretty much phased out of all the national guidance and replaced with 'online safety/safeguarding' to show that it very much should be viewed as a safeguarding and not an IT issue.

 

I've published an updated summary about the online safety responsibilities within KCSIE 2023 here. It isn't a checklist as such, but it does have a number of 'action points' throughout for DSLs and school/college leaders to consider as well as links to resources to support schools. The key update to KCSIE 2023 was relating to increased emphasis on the role of the DSL in appropriate filtering and monitoring and signposting to the new DfE filtering and monitoring standards. The UK Safer Internet ran a series of webinars last week - the recordings are now available to watch, along with a checklist and some FAQs, links to resources etc.

 

You may have an online safety and/or safeguarding lead in your local authority who can support your school within its specific local context but if not, Part two of KCSIE signposts to some really useful resources which I'd recommend as being excellent starting points you could use and share and use with the DSL. This includes the LGFL website/audit and/or 360 safe audit from SWGfL, lots of documents from the UKCIS Education working group and also the UK Safer Internet Centre resources.