Holiday Time Safeguarding Monitoring

[mitchell1981]

Hi All,

 

We've recently started giving students take-home devices, and we have pushed out the Smoothwall Cloud filter to monitor their usage. The safeguarding team are pleased with it, and are reacting to notifications as and when the come in. But this has raised discussions around what our response should be during holiday time, when staff are not necessarily checking emails daily, and have not been historically contracted to be working. Where does our responsibility begin and end?

 

How do other schools deal with this? If not checked, we could miss something critical that ends in disaster, but to expect staff to work on their holiday, is not something we have done before. Does this fall back to someone who is full-time?
I know there are services that can monitor this stuff on our behalf, but they would still need to report to someone at the school for action to be taken. 

 

Or perhaps we should not be monitoring devices at home at all during holidays, and require parents to take responsibility as a condition of having a device?

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

[TheRobins]

Sounds an easy cop out, but the Safeguarding Lead has responsibility for monitoring and filtering, I would be getting them involved in these discussions as soon as. 

[PotNoodleTech]

It's not an easy cop out it's the truth - This is a Safeguarding Lead issue not an IT issue.  Ultimately it's the DSO's responsibility to a) decide/create the policy and b) use the existing safeguarding/wellbeing staffing to impliment the policy.

 

Your job as IT support was to set up the filter and ensure the filter works.  Which it does. 

[simpsonj]

I would advise your DSL to look at a solution like Smoothwall Monitor (I think Securus and Securly have similar offerings) which provides 24/7/365 safeguard checks, particularly if the school is giving out devices for students to use at home.

[mitchell1981]

Thank you.

To be fair on the DSL, it is her who has asked the question. I think she is just looking for advice on how other schools handle it, before updating the policy. I'm not going to allow this to fall back on the IT Team.

[mikes]

Our DSL isn't going to be checking her e-mails 24/7 surely, she is not being paid to be on call 24/7.  Smoothwall Cloud isn't just a monitor, it also filters, and I believe that is covering what the law requires for off-site devices.

[tom_newton]

It's a tricky one, for sure.

One of the ways some folks solve it is to use an assisted service like Smoothwall Monitor - this way you know you will get a phone call for anything urgent, so the fear of not being connected to your email 24x7 is lowered.

[PotNoodleTech]

None of that really solves the main issue which is no one in school is actually paid to be on call 24/7.

 

The staffing side is what needs to be solved it doesnt matter if the system sends emails or phone calls there needs to be someone the other side to read the email or answer the phone.

[simpsonj]

As I understand it, if Smoothwall Monitor cannot reach a member of staff, and the risk is deemed sufficient, they will call the relevant authorities to alert them to the issue.

[TechMonkey]

8 minutes ago, PotNoodleTech said:

None of that really solves the main issue which is no one in school is actually paid to be on call 24/7.

Well technically Teachers are. Teachers, Police and Army are apparently the only ones. Or so I was led to believe.

 But I agree with your argument that there needs to be policy on who or what deals with the alerts when they come in.

[GrumbleDook]

Was a DPIA done to assess the risks on this? 

This is one of those discussions where some folk will talk about the liabilities of providing devices and something going wrong, and those saying that it is an invasion of privacy. 

I have been asking the question for nearly 20 years which you need to take as the priority and the consistent message is "It depends!" ... and this is why your risk assessment is so important.

 

For classroom.cloud, we talk about how you make choices based on the needs of the school (in their duties and activities for the learners), but also about being transparent with parents and children. These discussions have to be led by the DSL, but with input from all stakeholders. The ICO's DPIA template gives you space to discuss what impact stakeholder engagement has had on your approach. 

 

When it comes to alerts and notifications, that is also an area that needs careful consideration, and has to be part of the risk assessment too. 

Basically, there is no single answer to it all, and there is no shortcut to the efforts on risk assessment.

[mavhc]

Are teachers actually on holiday? They always say they're supposed to be working and they don't actually have loads more holidays than office workers

[GrumbleDook]

On 17/06/2025 at 14:32, mavhc said:

Are teachers actually on holiday? They always say they're supposed to be working and they don't actually have loads more holidays than office workers

I presume this was said tongue in cheek, but just to repeat things for all to be aware ... teachers work on directed time. Teachers’ working time | National Education Union provides a good breakdown of what it covers. However, it is not uncommon to hear of teachers working 50+ hours a week, and from recent surveys 1/5 work 60+hours. The holidays will often also involve work, whether marking and planning, or being back in school running extra sessions, sorting out displays and more. So yes, teachers are only meant to work the Directed Time, but often they work a lot more.

Senior Leaders in school are meant to work more, and both the Head and Dep Head don't have restrictions on how much they work or when, but that doesn't mean they will be free to deal with issues at any time, night or day.