The e-Safety Triangle – are you compliant?

Online safety is an ever-shifting tide; changes in technology, risks, law etc. can create a conundrum for schools to keep up with what can or can’t, should or shouldn’t be done to ensure that children are safeguarded and that the school has minimised any risk and therefore any liability.

e-Safety Compliance TriangleHowever there are always the fundamentals, the corner-stone if you will, that gives the most appropriate starting point upon which to build.  This I call the e-safety compliance triangle.  If you think of it like the fire triangle – you have heat, oxygen and fuel.  Take any one of these away and you don’t have a fire.  This is similar to the e-safety compliance triangle; you have policy/liability, safe-use and technology.  Take any one of these away and you don’t have e-safety compliance.

Technology – in this context the technology is the tools that are used in the school to assist with safeguarding.  For example this could be internet filtering tools or behaviour management tools such as Securus.  These tools need to be managed; straight out of the box they are just another piece of software which could cause a considerable amount of frustration amongst students and staff, but configured and managed correctly they are a very powerful tool in your toolkit.

Policy and Liability – a lot of consideration needs to be given to the unique circumstances of your school; very rarely are two schools the same regarding what technology is being used, how that technology is being used, and the definition of “what is inappropriate/appropriate” within your school.  This is why copying an acceptable use policy or an e-safety policy from the internet is not a great idea, unless you are going to tailor it to your own unique circumstances.  Some examples of what should be considered are:

  • Do you allow students and/or staff to use their own devices (i.e. smartphones, laptops, cameras)?
  • Do you have a bring your own device (BYOD) policy?
  • Do you allow students to have and/or use their own mobile or smartphones?
  • Do staff take work home with them.  If so are they using a school laptop which contains personal/sensitive data?
  • Do you allow the use of social networking in the school?  This could be a school Twitter or Facebook account, or you may have class blog or Twitter accounts.
  • ….and much more.
If any of the above examples are applicable then you must risk assess.  In other words, what could happen and how do you mitigate.  By risk assessing you are considering a worst case example which gives you your potential liability.  You then mitigate this and embed this mitigation within your policy.  Remember also that sometimes when new technology comes along risks change and new risks are borne.  Any policy is a live document which has to be periodically reviewed (minimum annually), or when circumstances in your school change.


Safe Use
– teaching and empowering students is one thing, but consideration must also be given to raising the awareness with all staff, the governing body and parents too.  e-Safety is like health and safety; it is the responsibility of everyone to safeguard the child therefore it is the responsibility of everyone to know what the risks are.What are your thoughts on the e-safety compliance triangle?  Do you find it difficult finding the right advice or identifying with all the issues?

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