Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE)

Statutory Guidance Affecting Online Safety in Schools Effective 1st September 2023

In March 2023 updates were made to the statutory guidance “Keeping Children Safe in Education.” This came into effect on 1st September 2023. Responsibility for online safety in schools now sits with Governing Bodies and Proprietors, Senior Leadership Teams, and Designated Safeguarding Leads.

Governing bodies and proprietors have overall strategic responsibility for safeguarding in schools, Senior Leadership Teams are responsible for the procurement of systems and filtering decisions, and Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) should lead on the day-to-day responsibility for safeguarding and online safety. Both safeguarding and IT staff are now required to work closely together to use expertise and technology to improve safeguarding. In addition to the assigning of new roles, there are also specific requirements in relation to safeguarding training, training on filtering and monitoring systems, child protection policies, and reviewing of your filtering and monitoring systems. For a short video overview of the new responsibilities relating to online safety and some of the actions you need to take if you haven’t already, you can visit www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk/KCSiE2023

Changes in Responsibility Relating to Online Safety in Schools

Training, Including Training in Online Safety
All school staff should now receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection training, including training for online safety. Training should also include safeguarding roles and responsibilities within your school and the school’s own policy and expectations around filtering & monitoring.

The Designated Safeguarding Lead and Real Time Alerts
Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure an appropriate, senior member of staff from the senior leadership team is appointed as the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL). The DSL is required to take lead responsibility for safeguarding and child protection, including online safety and understanding the filtering and monitoring systems and processes used in your school. The Schools Broadband cloud-based filtering, monitoring and Safeguarding Incident Management service comes with full online training accessed via the Schools Broadband customer hub. It supports schools in both their DfE and KCSiE filtering and monitoring compliance. Included as part of the service is an enhanced real-time alerting tool designed to help DSLs in their management of children and young people’s activity online. The designated safeguarding lead’s role carries a significant level of responsibility and the postholder should be given additional time, funding, training, resources, and support needed to carry out the role effectively.

The Child Protection Policy
Online safety and the school or college’s approach to online safety should be reflected in the child protection policy which, amongst other things, should include appropriate filtering and monitoring on school devices and school networks. A link to the Schools Broadband Appropriate Filtering checklist can be found on the KCSiE2023 page of the Schools Broadband website. www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk/KCSiE2023. You should check your current filtering provider has this certification: These can be checked on the UK Safer Internet Centre website https://saferinternet.org.uk/

Review Filtering and Monitoring Provision Annually
To support schools and Multi Academy Trusts in meeting the Keeping Children Safe in Education duty, the Department for Education also updated their Filtering and Monitoring Standards in March 2023. The standards set out that schools and colleges should: identify and assign roles and responsibilities to manage filtering and monitoring systems; review filtering and monitoring provision at least annually; block harmful and inappropriate content without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning; have effective monitoring strategies in place that meet their safeguarding needs and Governing bodies and proprietors should review the standards and discuss with IT staff and service providers what more needs to be done to support schools and colleges in meeting this standard.

How Can Schools Broadband Help?
Schools Broadband is a leading provider of broadband and Internet connections designed especially for education. Our filtering and security services are all delivered via our education cloud, meaning the service is easy to install, easy to use and easy for us to manage remotely and assist when help is required; you also benefit from some of the world’s best filtering and security services at a price that’s right for education. Now providing services to over 2200 schools and 275 multi academy trusts, and with six ISPA awards for cloud and security services, we are one of the most trusted and respected Internet Service Providers in the education field.

Online Training
All our services come with online training programmes giving step by step video instructions on how to use our software, ensuring your school has knowledgeable staff, provides compliant online safety for children, and keeps your school compliant with Keeping Children Safe in Education.

01133 222 333 (Option 3)
info@schoolsbroadband.co.uk
www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk