Supporting the ‘Keeping Learners Safe’ guidance 2021
The Keeping Learners Safe guidance highlights the safeguarding roles and responsibilities in the Welsh education system and how they link to external agencies for child protection.
In this document, we outline how our IT management and Safeguarding solution (NetSupport DNA), our classroom management solution (NetSupport School) and cloud-based teaching platform (classroom.cloud) can help schools to meet their safeguarding requirements in line with the guidance, whilst simultaneously offering support to students in need.
The following tables show a quote from the Keeping Learners Safe guidance (2021), its location and given paragraph number in the document, followed by an explanation of how NetSupport’s solutions help to support each one.
1. The framework for safeguarding in Wales
Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015
1.18. “In line with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, schools and colleges should maintain an emphasis on prevention, in terms of early intervention, with a view to reducing the risks children are exposed to and subsequent difficulties in later life.”
Having an insight into students’ activity is invaluable and could help facilitate an early intervention when students are engaged in activity that could place them at risk. Both classroom.cloud and NetSupport DNA provide teachers with this via the contextual intelligence-based Risk Index that produces a risk score for an individual student at that moment in time, meaning that teachers can intervene, as necessary. They can also use the ‘Add a concern’ tool to take notes of a developing situation with a student.
2. Safeguarding roles and responsibilities in the education system
Responsibilities of head teachers/principals/education setting leader
2.13. “Head teachers and principals of all schools and colleges should ensure that all staff (including supply teachers and volunteers):
“… fully implement and follow the safeguarding policies and procedures adopted by the governing body or proprietor…”
“… as part of their induction, are given a written statement about the school or college policy and procedures and the name and contact details of the DSP.”
NetSupport DNA provides a flexible method of delivering and tracking policy distribution in a school to ensure nobody is missed; automatically presenting them to new staff to read, to all staff when updates have been applied, or to students to agree to an Acceptable Use Policy. The single upload saves time for administrators, who can assign the policy to a distribution list, and, as a bonus, it ensures an accurate record is kept of who has seen and agreed to each policy.
Role and responsibilities of the DSP
2.23. “The DSP role … must keep the head teacher/principal informed of all safeguarding concerns raised in the school or college.”
Being able to keep the head teacher informed means staff must be aware of what is happening on the ground. NetSupport DNA allows students to report their concerns in confidence to a trusted member of staff via its ‘Report a concern’ option – either within school hours or out-of-hours through the school’s website (if the school chooses to enable this). They can share their problem by sending a message with screenshots or documents to their chosen staff member. This member of staff is instantly alerted when a concern is raised and can then track it and record any follow-up actions directly from within NetSupport DNA. DSPs and safeguarding staff at the school can be assigned rights to view all concerns raised and will be alerted if any concern is not actioned within a pre-defined period.
Not only this, but the word clouds provided in NetSupport DNA and classroom.cloud give staff an immediate overview of the topics that students are typing, copying or searching for online, and, with this additional insight, DSPs can be alerted to any issues in a timely manner.
2.24. “The DSP should also consider how safeguarding more widely can be addressed and ensure preventative measures are adopted in the education setting. This part of the role will include building relationships with other agencies, as well as ensuring staff and learners are informed about risks and how to access support.”
Both classroom.cloud’s online safety tools and NetSupport DNA’s Safeguarding module provide opportunities for safeguarding staff to extend safeguarding procedures and activities throughout the school. For example, they both provide insights into students’ online activity and alert staff when students are potentially at risk, allowing staff to either talk to a single student or use alert trends as an opportunity for a wider discussion as part of digital citizenship education.
Students can report concerns to trusted teachers and find out about sources of external support from NetSupport DNA – giving them all the tools they need to reach out for help.
3. Responding to concerns that a child is at risk
3.4. “Everyone in the education system who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play in safeguarding children, as they are in a position to identify concerns early and provide help for children to prevent issues from escalating.”
classroom.cloud and NetSupport DNA’s Keyword and Phrase monitoring tools can give teachers an insight into what students type, copy or search for, which helps to detect safeguarding issues across all topics. Their language packs also allow teachers to extend their safeguarding provision to a wider group of students, as the packs allow them to see and monitor phonetic representations of what students are typing in languages other than English.
In terms of providing help, students in schools using NetSupport DNA can request this via the Report a concern option (detailed above) – and in both NetSupport DNA and classroom.cloud, students can refer to an integrated directory of online support organisations, should they wish to seek external help.
Seeking advice on concerns
3.13. “Every education setting should have a suitable system in place to support effective data collection of children suspected to be at risk.”
For any serious safeguarding incident that needs to be referred to external agencies, evidence and records are key. The fact that classroom.cloud and NetSupport DNA record triggered keywords or reported concerns now forms an important part of an evidence trail – and that the school has been able to classify its vulnerable students demonstrates its vigilance. Any retrospective information required can be extracted from NetSupport DNA either from its reporting tools – plus, depending on severity, triggered events are stored as a simple log, a screenshot or screen recording that provide the full background to an event.
Listening to the child
3.18. “Children will talk about their concerns and problems with people they feel they can trust and are comfortable with.”
Using the ‘Report a concern’ feature of NetSupport DNA, students can confide their worries to trusted staff and attach screenshots, messages or other evidence to their concern record. They can either do this directly from their PC at school or the school’s website out of hours.
3.21. “…If a child makes a disclosure to a member of staff, the staff member should write a record of the conversation as soon as possible, distinguishing clearly between fact, observation, allegation and opinion…”
NetSupport DNA allows teachers to document any concerns about individual students – and also when a student tells them of a concern verbally – via its ‘Add a concern’ feature. Not only does this help to stop any incidents recorded onto pieces of paper from going missing, but it helps standardise reporting and prevents concerns from being forgotten about. A ’History of concerns’ for each student is also available and allows staff to review the details of issues raised over time.
Record-keeping and information-sharing
3.55. “In education settings, it is the responsibility of the DSP to keep detailed, accurate and secure written records of children where there are safeguarding concerns.”
NetSupport School can provide teachers with a record of students’ keyboard activity, website and application usage for that lesson, while in NetSupport DNA, in addition to teachers being able to ‘Add a concern’ they can also flag any students they know are particularly at risk as ‘vulnerable’ on the system – even grouping these students together so they can be monitored in a single view. This makes it easier for concerned staff to keep an eye on these students and add to their notes quickly and easily.
For schools with MYCONCERN or CPOMS accounts, these integrate directly with classroom.cloud, meaning that any triggered events can be linked to student records in these accounts – and the event is viewable in both places.
3.58. “All those working in an education setting should be aware of their responsibilities under the UK’s data protection legislation.”
NetSupport DNA’s GDPR toolkit helps schools ensure the protection of students’ data, which supports the confidentiality needed for safeguarding issues. It includes the ability for teachers to identify files that may contain confidential information about students – and helps prevent data breaches by alerting IT technicians if unexpected changes occur across the network, as well as boosting data security by including endpoint security controls for USB stick and portable media use.
NetSupport DNA’s software licensing module allows schools to keep track of the software they have installed and record whether it is GDPR-compliant in terms of the data it collects – as well as ensuring that the school’s own data is secure and stored correctly.
You can read how we incorporate privacy considerations into classroom.cloud here.
7. Keeping learners safe and secure online
7.8. “It is critical that web-filtering standards are fit for purpose for 21st Century learning and teaching, allowing the access schools require while still safeguarding children and young people.”
As students learn online digital citizenship skills, NetSupport School and classroom.cloud narrow the parameters of how far they can go with the ability for the teacher to create ‘allowed’ and ‘restricted’ website lists to ensure unsuitable sites are out of reach. In addition, NetSupport School incorporates a SafeSearch feature that overrides the search settings for most leading search engines and prevents inappropriate content being returned within search results.
NetSupport DNA also allows the creation of profiles to ensure that internet access is age appropriate, while allowing the students the flexibility to learn about the online world. Over-blocking can mean that any potential safeguarding problems are simply shifted elsewhere, so NetSupport DNA offers teachers an insight into their students’ online activities so that they are aware of exactly what risks students are being exposed to, as well as being able to gauge their understanding of the elements of digital citizenship. Its flexible tools ensure that checks are in place to ensure
a safe environment in which to learn.
8. Community Cohesion
Preventing radicalisation
8.6. “Schools and colleges must ensure that safeguarding procedures include provision for identifying and addressing risks relating to radicalisation and extremism.”
Both classroom.cloud and NetSupport DNA’s Keyboard and Phrase monitoring tool produces a word cloud of terms being typed by students and shows trending topics across the school. These can have individual severity levels set (determined by the school) that control the outcome on matching the triggered keyword to an action: from a simple logging of the event, through to capturing a screenshot or a screen recording of the user’s activity when triggered – so teachers can see the full background.
By clicking on any word in the cloud, DSPs can see details of which students have typed it and the application used. Appropriate staff can be alerted through email, real-time pop-ups or summary reports. The DSP can also see alerts on their smartphones on the go via NetSupport DNA’s Cloud-based Safeguarding Console.
8.12. “Estyn expects inspectors to consider how education settings keep children and young people attending the education setting safe from the dangers of radicalisation and extremism.”
By using classroom.cloud’s online safety tools and NetSupport DNA’s Safeguarding module, schools can be confident that all aspects of eSafety are being covered and that they are providing a safe online environment in which students can learn. These tools can be used by DSPs and safeguarding staff, independently of the IT team, which ensures that any concerns are dealt with confidentially.
