E-Safeguarding Policy

Moat-House

October 2017

Headteacher: Lucy Cooney

Background and rationale

The potential that technology has to impact on our lives increases year on year. In many areas technology is transforming the way that schools teach and that students learn. At home, technology is changing the way we live and the activities in which we choose to partake; these trends are set to continue.

While developing technology brings many opportunities, it also brings risks and potential dangers of which these are just a few:

•Access to illegal, harmful or inappropriate images or other content

•Unauthorised access to / loss of / sharing of personal information

•Young people being targeted by radical groups to recruit support or to engage them in terrorist activity

•The risk of being victims to grooming / sexual abuse and exploitation by those with whom they make contact on the internet

•The sharing / distribution of personal images without an individual’s consent or knowledge

•Inappropriate communication / contact with others, including strangers

•Cyber-bullying

•Access to unsuitable video / internet games

•An inability to evaluate the quality, accuracy and relevance of information on the internet

•Plagiarism and copyright infringement

•Illegal downloading of music or video files

•The potential for excessive use which may impact on social and emotional development and learning.

This policy sets out how we strive to keep students safe with technology while they are in school. It is also recognised within the scope of this policy document the risks which students may face using technology at home and therefore outlines how we will serve to educate students about potential risks.

Our school’s e-safeguarding policy has been developed alongside national guidelines following the advice and templates provided by the South West Grid for Learning.

Development / Monitoring / Review of this Policy

This e-safeguarding policy has been developed and will be monitored by a working group made up of:

•Headteacherand Senior Leaders

•E-Safety Coordinator

•Staff – including Teachers, Support Staff

•The Governing Body

•Parents and Carers

Schedule for Development / Monitoring / Review

This e-safety policy was approved by the Governing Body / Approved October 2014
The implementation of this e-safety policy will be monitored by the: / Head-Teacher
E-Safety Coordinator
Senior Leadership Team
Monitoring will take place at regular intervals: / Annually with review occurring in September of each Academic Year
The E-Safety Policy will be reviewed annually, or more regularly in the light of any significant new developments in the use of the technologies, new threats to e-safety or incidents that have taken place. The next anticipated review date will be: / October 2016
Should serious e-safety incidents take place, the following external persons / agencies should be informed: / LA ICT Manager,
LA Safeguarding Officer,
Police

Scope of the Policy

This policy applies to all members of the school community (including staff, students / pupils, volunteers, parents / carers, visitors, community users) who have access to and are users of school ICT systems, both in and out of the school.

The Education and Inspections Act 2006 empowers Headteachers to such extent as is reasonable, to regulate the behaviour of students when they are off the schoolsite and empowers members of staff to impose disciplinary penalties for inappropriate behaviour. This is pertinent to incidents of cyber-bullying, or other e-safety incidents covered by this policy, which may take place outside of the school, but is linked to membership of the school / academy. The 2011 Education Act increased these powers with regard to the searching for and of electronic devices and the deletion of data (see appendix for template policy). In the case of both acts, action can only be taken over issues covered by the published Behaviour Policy.

The school will deal with such incidents within this policy and associated behaviour and anti-bullying policies and will, where known, inform parents / carers of incidents of inappropriate e-safety behaviour that take place out of school.

Roles and Responsibilities

The following section outlines the e-safety roles and responsibilities of individuals and groups within the school

Responsibilities: Headteacher.

The Headteacher is responsible for ensuring the safety (including safety) of members of the school community.

The Headteacher and other members of the Senior Leadership Team should be aware of the procedures to be followed in the event of a serious e-safety allegation against a member of staff.

The Headteacher as Designated safeguarding Lead receives reports of e-safety incidents and stores a log of incidents to inform future e-safety developments.

The Headteacher meets regularly with the Safeguarding Governor and reports termly to Governors on any incidents that breach e-safety

Responsibilities: Governing Body

Our governors are responsible for the approval of this policy and for reviewing its effectiveness. This will becarried out by the governors receiving regular information about e-safety incidents and monitoring reports. Moat House has a Safeguarding Governor.A member of the governing body has taken on the role of safeguarding governor. This governor will receive reports on:

• monitoring of e-safety incident logs

• monitoring of filtering change control logs (these will be provided be e-safe system)

In addition, the Headteacher will report any breaches in the policy in a termly report to the Governing Body.

Responsibilities: IT Coordinator

Within Moat House the IT coordinator is taking a lead role in e-safety and is directly responsible to the Headteacher and the governing body for the day to day issues relating to safety. In this document the IT coordinater will be referred to as the e-safety coordinator. As such, the e-safety coordinator will:

•takes a lead role in establishing and reviewing the school e-safety policies and associated documents

•ensures that all staff are aware of the procedures that need to be followed in the event of an e-safety incident

•provide training and advice for staff

•Ensure that all students have completed an induction programme to IT at Moat House before a log on and password is requested from the It Technician for the student.

•liaise with the Local Authority

•liaise with school ICT technical staff

•receive appropriate training and support to fulfil their role effectively

•pass on requests for blocking / unblocking to the ICT Helpdesk

•maintain logs of any occasions where the school has used its powers of search and deletion of electronic devices

Responsibilities: classroom based staff

Teaching and Support Staff are responsible for ensuring that:

• they have an up to date awareness of e-safety matters and of the current school e-safety policy and practices

• they have read, understood and signed the school’s Acceptable Use Policy for staff

• they report any suspected misuse or problem to the E-Safety Co-ordinator

• digital communications with students (email / Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) / voice) should be on a professional level and only carried out using official school systems

• e-safety issues are embedded in the curriculum and other school activities.

Responsibilities: ICT technician (AVA - Service Level Agreement staff)

The ICT Technician is responsible for ensuring that:

• the school’s ICT infrastructure is secure and is not open to misuse or malicious attack

• users may only access the school’s networks through a properly enforced password protection policy

• shortcomings in the infrastructure are reported to the ICT coordinator or head teacher so that appropriate action may be taken.

Students:

All members of the school community are responsible for using the school ICT systems in accordance with the appropriate acceptable use policy, which they will be expected to sign before being given access to school systems.

•All students are required to surrender their mobile phones /electronic devices on entering Moat House. These devices are stored securely within a safe in the Office – which can be accessed by 3 staff (Admin Manager, Assistant Headteacher and Nursery Manager)

•As part of Student enrolment, students sign an agreement to “ work with us to ensure Moat House is a safe place for all its users – this includes not naming members of the Moat House community or “Moat House” itself on Social Media sites/forums.”

•Students are responsible for using the schooldigital technology systems in accordance with the Student Acceptable use of the Computers Policy

•They should have a good understanding of research skills and the need to avoid plagiarism and uphold copyright regulations

•Students need to understand the importance of reporting abuse, misuse or access to inappropriate materials and know how to do so

•Student should understand routes for reporting abuse and misuse of computers (CEOP)

Parents / Carers

Parents / Carers play a crucial role in ensuring that their children understand the need to use the internet / mobile devices in an appropriate way. The school will take every opportunity to help parents understand these issues through newsletters, letters, and information about local e-safety campaigns. Parents are informed during the induction process that the National crime Agency’s CEOP Command has regular updates and advise on the Thinkuknow website, on all aspects of internet safety, as well as specific advice on preventing children from becoming victims of sexual abuse and exploitation both on line and in the “real world”. Parents and carers will be encouraged to support the school in promoting good e-safety practice and to follow guidelines on the appropriate use of:

•digital and video images taken at school events

•access to sections of the website / VLE

•reporting concerns about inappropriate use of ICT

Whole School approach and links to other policies

This policy has strong links to other school policies as follows:

Safeguarding Safeguarding children electronically is an important aspect of E-Safety. The e-safety policy forms a part of the school’s safeguarding policy. Pages 14-19 talks specifically about Youth produced Images, Cyber bullying, online gaming and on page 30 Sexting.

E-Safeguarding Policy How we strive to ensure that all individuals in school stay safe while using ICT.

Student Acceptable Use PolicySets out expectations of students in relation to ICT equipment

Staff Acceptable Use PolicySets out expectations of staff in relation to ICT equipment

Anti-bullying How our school strives to illuminate bullying – link to cyber bullying

PSHE E-Safety has links to this – staying safe

Behaviour PolicyExpectations about the behaviour of Moat House students including use of computing resources

Data Protection PolicyOnline records should be maintained and updated in line with the Data Protection Act

E-Safety Education

Education – students

Whilst regulation and technical solutions are very important, their use must be balanced by educating students to take a responsible approach. The education of students in e-safety is therefore an essential part of the school’s e-safety provision. Children and young people need the help and support of the school to recognise and avoid e-safety risks and build their resilience.

E-safety should be a formalised component of a student’s induction to Moat House. The student will not receive a password to either the school network or the VLE until they have undergone an induction and signed the “Acceptable Use of Computers” Agreement.

E-safety should be a focus in all areas of the curriculum and staff should reinforce e-safety messages across the curriculum. The e-safety curriculum should be broad, relevant and provide progression, with opportunities for creative activities and will be provided in the following ways:

•A planned e-safety curriculum will be provided as part of IT / Lifeskills / other lessons and should be regularly revisited

•Key e-safety messages will be reinforced as part of a planned programme of assemblies and pastoral activities, such as Key worker time.

•Students should be taught in all lessons to be critically aware of the materials / content they access on-line and be guided to validate the accuracy of information.

•Students / pupils should be taught to acknowledge the source of information used and to respect copyright when using material accessed on the internet

•Students should be helped to understand the need for the student Acceptable Use Agreement and encouraged to adopt safe and responsible use both within and outside school

•Staff should act as good role models in their use of digital technologies the internet and mobile devices

•in lessons where internet use is pre-planned, it is best practice that students should be guided to sites checked as suitable for their use and that processes are in place for dealing with any unsuitable material that is found in internet searches.

•Where students are allowed to freely search the internet, staff should be vigilant in monitoring the content of the websites the young people visit.

•It is accepted that from time to time, for good educational reasons, students may need to research topics (eg racism, drugs, discrimination) that would normally result in internet searches being blocked. In such a situation, staff can request that the Technical Staff (or other relevant designated person) can temporarily remove those sites from the filtered list for the period of study. Any request to do so, should be auditable, with clear reasons for the need.

Education – parents / carers

Parents play an essential role in the education of their children and in the monitoring / regulation of the children’s on-line behaviours. Parents may underestimate how often children and young people come across potentially harmful and inappropriate material on the internet and may be unsure about how to respond.

The school will therefore seek to provide information and awareness to parents and carers through:

•Letters, newsletters, web site, VLE

•Parents / Carers evenings / sessions

•High profile events / campaigns e.g. Safer Internet Day

Education & Training – Staff

It is essential that all staff receive e-safety training and understand their responsibilities, as outlined in this policy. Training will be offered as follows:

•A planned programme of formal e-safety training will be made available to staff. This will be regularly updated and reinforced.

•All new staff should receive e-safety training as part of their induction programme, ensuring that they fully understand the school e-safety policy and Acceptable Use Agreements. This should form a clear element of the induction process and should incorporate elements of policy alongside guidance on use of passwords and the esafe filtering system.

•This E-Safety policy and its updates will be presented to and discussed by staff in staff meetings and INSET days.

•The E-Safety Coordinator will provide advic, guidance and training to individuals as required on an ongoing basis.

Training – Governing Body

Governors should take part in e-safety training / awareness sessions, with particular importance for those who are responsible for safe-guarding and child protection. This may be offered in a number of ways:

•Attendance at training provided by the Local Authority / National Governors Association / or other relevant organisation (eg NGA / Governor ).

•Participation in school training / information sessions for staff or parents

Technical – infrastructure / equipment, filtering and monitoring

The school will be responsible for ensuring that the school infrastructure / network is as safe and secure as is reasonably possible and that policies and procedures approved within this policy are implemented. It will also need to ensure that the relevant people named in the above sections will be effective in carrying out their e-safety responsibilities.

Technical – infrastructure / equipment, filtering and monitoring

School technical systems will be managed in ways that ensure that the school meets recommended technical requirements

•There will be regular reviews and audits of the safety and security of school technical systems

•Servers, wireless systems and cabling must be securely located and physical access restricted

•All users will have clearly defined access rights to school technical systems and devices.

•All users will be provided with a username and secure password by R Dixson who will keep an up to date record of users and their usernames. Users are responsible for the security of their username and password and will be required to change their password every term

•The head-teacheris responsible for ensuring that software licence logs are accurate and up to date and that regular checks are made to reconcile the number of licences purchased against the number of software installations

•Internet access is filtered for all users.

•The school has provided enhanced user-level filtering. Moat House will use e-safe software which will monitor words and phrases, in any language, as well as images that are moving and static.

•School users are made aware of this in the Acceptable Use Agreement

•Appropriate security measures are in place to protect the servers, firewalls, routers, wireless systems, work stations, mobile devices etc from accidental or malicious attempts which might threaten the security of the school systems and data.

Use of digital and video images

• When using digital images, staff should inform and educate pupils about the risks associated with the taking, use, sharing, publication and distribution of images. In particular they should recognise the risks attached to publishing their own images on the internet e.g. on social networking sites.

• Members of staff are allowed to take digital still and video images to educational aims, but must follow school policies concerning the sharing, distribution and publication of those images. Those images should only be captured using school equipment; the personal equipment of staff should not be used for such purposes.