KCSiE Compliance & Digital Obligations Webinar
Safeguarding Consultant, Joanne Bocko from Judicium Education discusses KCSiE updates, and guides you through key obligations to meet statutory requirements.
KCSiE Compliance & Digital Obligations
This session looked at online risks and how schools are engaging parents, staff, and students around online safety. It also covered the most recent updates to Keeping Children Safe in Education and the Digital and Technology Standards with a specific focus on the filtering and monitoring requirements.
Below we have compiled some useful notes and links referenced in the webinar:
Online Risks
KCSiE refers to the 4 Cs which staff should be familiar with. They are Content, Contact, Conduct and Commerce.
CONTENT: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate, or harmful content, for example: pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, anti-Semitism, radicalisation, and extremism.
CONTACT: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users; for example: child-on-child abuse, commercial advertising and adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes.
CONDUCT: online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; for example, making, sending and receiving explicit images (e.g. consensual and non-consensual sharing of nudes and semi-nudes and/or pornography, sharing other explicit images and online bullying).
COMMERCE: risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams.
Policies
Online safety and the school or college’s approach to it should be reflected in your school’s child protection policy which, amongst other things, should include appropriate filtering and monitoring on school devices and school networks. You may have a separate Online Safety Policy although it’s more efficient to have it as part of your safeguarding policy.
What does good parental engagement look like?
Engaging parents with online safety can be difficult. Some parents may think their children are more technically capable online, which may be true, but a parents’ role here is to support their children with the critical thinking skills needed to identify risks online and keep them safe whilst they access content, particularly at home.
It can be overwhelming with the different apps and games available, but the risks of contact, content, conduct and commerce can apply across all. Staff and parents don’t need to know the ins and outs of a game or app to know the potential risks.
Filtering and monitoring
KCSIE has a strong focus on filtering and monitoring largely due to the death of Frankie Thomas, in which a child was able to access self-harm and suicide content on the school computers on the day she took her own life. The school incorrectly believed appropriate filters were in place. A review of this sad event prompted the DfE to provide schools with further guidance on filtering and monitoring Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges.
KCSIE and the Digital and Technology Standards provide a full overview of the new expectations for schools around filtering and monitoring, these are key points:
- You should identify and assign roles and responsibilities to manage your filtering and monitoring systems.
- Your filtering system should block harmful and inappropriate content, without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning.
- You should have effective monitoring strategies that meet the needs of your school.
- You should review your filtering and monitoring provision at least annually.
Additional recommendations (some mandatory, some best practice)
- Dedicate some time to reading Filtering and Monitoring Standards for Schools and Colleges to ensure your school has fulfilled the criteria.
- Your safeguarding team, school staff and governors should know what filtering and monitoring systems you have, generally how it works, and what to do if they have any concerns.
- Check if your safeguarding system is set up to appropriately categorise any incidents of filtering breaches, or monitoring alerts so that incidents can be reviewed, and trends identified.
- Ensure your governing body is aware of the guidance and can provide appropriate strategic challenge.
- Ensure your policies and procedures reference filtering and monitoring where appropriate.
Links referenced to in the Webinar
Gaming and gambling support: Homepage – YGAM
School’s Broadband’s guidance and UK Safer Internet Centre Response: https://www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk/kcsie2023/
Online safety guides for parents: Internet safety advice and information | Internet Matters
Teacher packs to engage parents: Support parents’ understanding of online safety | Internet Matters
Meeting digital and technology standard in schools and colleges: Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges – Filtering and monitoring standards for schools and colleges
Test your filter: Test Your Internet Filter | SWGfL Test Filtering