Essential Safeguarding

How can we possibly keep children safe in their online lives?

Whatever your personal experiences, knowledge or feelings about the role of technology in modern life are, you cannot stop or control the ways that children will use it. Some children will use technology more than others. Some will use it in ways you have never heard of. Some will use it in ways (or for reasons) you will never understand. Some will use it and not tell the people closest to them what they are doing. Some will be tempted to do things they know they shouldn’t.

This does not change your role as a teacher. You cannot control the online habits of your children, but you can – and must – guide them. You can give them the tools to know what to do in an unexpected situation. You can advise them of dangers and red flags. It is your duty to protect them from dangers you might not even be able to anticipate or understand. And this is absolutely fair and correct, because your role is to protect and educate your children.

So while I can fully understand why you might treat digital safeguarding with the sigh of resignation you might reserve for a visit to the dentist, you can’t put it off and you can’t gloss over it. I actually found teaching digital safeguarding to my class to be an amazing bonding experience. You are communicating with them about things that really matter to them. Your classroom should be a safe, emotionally secure place where your children open up about things that have affected them without fear of reprisals or ridicule. And if you are not as tech-savvy as they are, there will be a lot of children in the room that identify with your vulnerability. It’s your chance to model to them exactly how to open up and say to them, “I don’t know everything about this and I’m ready and willing to learn from you all.” Because when children don’t know or feel that they can do that, they bottle it inside and end up facing problems alone, making their own, flawed decisions.

But how can you prepare children for situations they (and you) don’t know about yet? Children often like things to be black and white – in situation x, you must do y. However, you will not be able to anticipate every situation that they might find themselves in. You have to give them flexible knowledge that they can adapt to any situation.

What does essential safeguarding look like?

Saying “all safeguarding is important” is a particularly glib and off-putting sentiment. It may be true, but you have limited time and resources and you want to have the maximum possible impact on your pupils’ online safety. It is therefore tempting to prioritise the most dangerous safeguarding issues, leaving less life-or-death issues for “another day”.

But digital safeguarding is more than just preventing the worst from happening. The digital world that our children inhabit is often poorly regulated and they are exposed to situations that slip under the radar in a way they would never be in the physical world. So all digital safeguarding is important, not just the life-or-death situations.

How can I help you keep your children safe?

I believe there are two tiers of digital safeguarding.

The first tier is the most serious tier and must be comprehensively addressed in your curriculum so that both adults and children know exactly what to do to keep themselves and each other safe online. This may include:

• Online grooming
• Online abuse
• Cyberbullying
• Digital footprints
• Radicalisation
• Pornography
• Exploitation
• Speaking to strangers online

These are absolute musts when it comes to preparing your children. They must know from a very early age which online behaviours are safe and which are dangerous. They must also know why they are dangerous. These aspects of digital safeguarding are often taught very well in schools. There are many different schemes and resources for delivering Tier 1 digital safeguarding, such as the NSPCC‘s resources and those from the National Crime Agency to mention just two. If you do not cover these in detail throught your school, stop what you are doing now and prioritise putting that essential safeguarding in place. Not covering these vital subjects represents a serious failure in safeguarding your children. I hate mentioning OFSTED – doing things “to meet their criteria” implies that you are not doing it because you believe in it – but this is safeguarding page one. Not providing demonstrable evidence that you are comprehensively addressing these issues up and down school is simply unacceptable.

Tier 2 Digital Safeguarding

What I call Tier 2 Digital Safeguarding refers to issues that are not as immediately catastrophic as Tier 1. However, this often means that they slip by undetected and often unremarked upon. And this to me is the real danger of these issues, because they are situations children actually face, often on a regular basis. If I have to mention OFSTED (*sigh*), addressing tier 2 issues would demonstrate outstanding computing cultural capital. They address PSHE and citizenship substantially. The impact of your implementation of digital safeguarding provision will be life-changing for the children. Butthat is exactly why you should do it, not because it ticks a box. Believe that tier 2 safeguarding will bring you closer to the children and give them skills they can make excellent use of throughout their lives.

But I’ve talked enough now. Let’s talk about what Tier 2 Digital Safeguarding actually is in the next post.

James