The proliferation of technology in education is undoubtedly a huge benefit for teaching and learning in the world today.
At the same time, the school/college IT system is arguably one the richest sources of markers of a wide range of safeguarding threats education leaders need to be vigilant of, including radicalisation, abuse, bullying and self-harm.
In response to this, the Department for Education (DfE) recently issued a revised statutory safeguarding guide - Keeping Children Safe in Education (Sept 2016). This has effectively increased the responsibility of schools and colleges to monitor activity on their IT devices. It has also firmly established the statutory duty for education leaders to identify safeguarding risks early to prevent them from escalating - while warning against stifling student learning opportunities through "over blocking"
1How safe is your safeguarding?
It’s a fine line - you want your students to develop new skills and make the most of the exciting learning opportunities the digital world offers. Then again, you also have a duty to safeguard the young people you’re committed to educating.
Research by eSafe shows that to monitor effectively - to review and assess all incidents in context, then determine which require an intervention plan, can take hours every day. What’s more, the markers can be extremely subtle, and without the expertise to identify them, the early warning signs can easily be misinterpreted, or worse still, missed altogether.
The range of safeguarding risks that children and young people in education may potentially face is broad,
with mental health issues being particularly prevalent, but incidents are rising across all categories.
As such, accurate detection and assessment of harmful, inappropriate or illegal behaviours to ensure fast, early intervention and support, is vital. Because of this, the Department for Education has now made monitoring for safeguarding purposes a statutory duty for education leaders, as defined by the latest “Keeping Children Safe in Education” guidance. It is also high up on the Inspectorates’ agenda.
Appropriate monitoring is the cornerstone of highly effective safeguarding strategy:
- Early intervention
- A constant measure of the effectiveness of intervention plans
- Behaviour modification
- Proactive pastoral support & guidance
eSafe is the only monitoring system to combine intelligent detection software, expert human behaviour analysis and dynamic threat libraries to identify threats others can’t.
eSafe is a robust and intelligent outsourced monitoring solution that’s designed to help educational leaders meet their statutory duty to safeguard students in their care – by taking the strain of detecting, assessing and interpreting safeguarding issues. Read more about eSafe and how it’s aligned with the latest “Keeping Children Safe in Education” guidance from the DfE here.
eSafe provides triple-lock protection.
eSafe monitors content in any language plus still and moving images for the early detection of safeguarding risks, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Here’s how
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Dynamic threat libraries - updated daily to maintain detection accuracy, in line with emerging behavioural trends within the locality, across the country and around the world. Bespoke threat libraries are also created for individual schools and colleges to pick up local slang, as well as issues such as gang culture.
Did you know that English is a 2nd language for more than 1m students in England?
eSafe gives valuable insight into your students’ wellbeing too
As well as working within the respective Inspectorates’ framework, the data gathered by eSafe gives a true and accurate gauge of wellbeing within the monitored school or college. This helps educational leaders proactively shape the pastoral agenda in line with the specific challenges their students may face at any given time. It also provides an accurate baseline for safeguarding strategies to be measured and assessed - and can make a significant contribution to school/college improvement planning.
“Monitoring software alone cannot detect the subtle signs of serious risk”
Mark Donkersley, MD eSafe
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At its most extreme Safeguarding is of course about the protection of the young people in our care - but I view our remit in a more holistic way: that is, one that extends to the promotion of their emotional health and well being. In eSafe I have an incredibly valuable tool that helps me react swiftly to the early signs of safeguarding risks and to proactively shape the pastoral agenda”
Andrew Pickles, Blackburn College
