Keeping Children Safe
in Education
Statutory guidance affecting online safety in schools, effective 1st September 2023
The Schools Broadband Filtering and Safeguarding Management Platform conforms to KCSiE and UKSIC definitions for appropriate filtering 2023
Overview
- In March 2023 updates were made to the statutory guidance “Keeping Children Safe in Education.” The updates strengthened existing standards and came into force on 1st September 2023.
- The standards stipulate, among other things, responsibilities for online safety in schools require a whole school commitment from Governing Bodies, Senior Leadership Teams, and Designated Safeguarding Leads. Both safeguarding and IT staff are now required to work closely together to use expertise and technology to improve safeguarding.
- For an overview of your responsibilities relating to online safety and some of the actions you need to take please watch this short video:
Child Protection Policy
- All schools are to update their Child Protection. Policies should include the school’s or Trust’s Filtering policy. (Some schools may choose to have a separate online safety policy where your filtering policy can be included). You can download our UK Safer Internet Centre Filtering Provider Checklist Response here:
Training for DSLs
- To support Schools Broadband customers in meeting the new requirements we have developed a series of short training videos. The videos are available in the Training Centre within the Talk Straight Hub.
- To access the videos, additional “Hub User Accounts” may need to be created for staff members who should undergo the training, especially your Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL).
- Someone from your school will already have authority to add new users. They can follow the instructions here:
- Once the additional Hub User Accounts have been set up, training can be accessed by clicking the Hub login button below and selecting “Training Centre” from the Hub menu.
If you require any assistance, please email support@talk-straight.com
Safeguarding Incident Management
- The Digital Broadband and Technology standards state that your filtering systems should be capable of providing urgent alerts where online safeguarding risks occur. Whilst you can schedule reports as part of the Schools Broadband filtering service, by registering for our Safeguarding Incident Management service, you will benefit from upgraded reports and alerts that go one step further than the standard filtering reports, allowing you to have real-time alerts, configurable for a lot more items, to further support your compliance.