As everyone knows, safeguarding is at the top of everybody’s agenda at the moment, and part of that agenda is e-safety. I recently attended a Becta ICT Mark assessor’s conference and we had a very interesting discussion about this subject. Some key points emerged:
- · It’s not sufficient to just let a third party filter and manage your web connection, you need to know how to monitor your web connection yourself;
- · It’s not just about blocking. Ofsted may take an equally dim view of over-zealous filtering that prevents pupils from accessing resources that they need to use to complete their work;
- · E-safety needs to be embedded into the culture and curriculum of the school.
Here is a link to an e-safety audit I did some years ago and I am very pleased that it is more or less in line with current thinking – I’ve tweaked it to update it, but it might provide a useful starting point.
Becta have produced a useful e-safety poster with questions and links. Becta are currently out of stock, but I have a number of copies which I can post out to interested parties. To download an electronic version, click here.
It seems to me to be quite clear that gone are the days when a school could just expect the local broadband consortium to filter the internet and leave it at that.