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Safeguarding Template Policies and Guidance

National Safeguarding Guidance for Education Settings

Education settings are required to comply with national guidance and legislation. This includes:

  • Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 outlines what individuals, organisations and agencies must do to protect children from harm and promote their welfare.
  • Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 is statutory guidance for all staff working in schools and colleges which outlines their responsibilities to provide a safe environment in which children can learn. This guidance was last updated in September 2022 and applies from 1st September 2022.
  • Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework 2021 outlines the standards that school and childcare providers must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5. This guidance was last updated in June 2021 and applies from 1st September 2021.

Links to other national guidance which may be useful for DSLs and education leaders includes:

Professional Practice

Parental Responsibility

Information Sharing

Behaviour

Ofsted

Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI)

The Education Safeguarding Service produced a number of guidance documents for schools and settings in response to Covid-19 pandemic.  Please note, schools and settings should follow the current guidance; some of these documents are now archived but copies are still accessible and should be viewed as reference only.

Child Protection Policy Templates from the Education Safeguarding Service

Education settings must have a suite of effective safeguarding policies which describe the expectations, procedures and arrangements put in place to safeguard and promote children’s welfare; these should be updated at least annually, or whenever there is an update or change to statutory guidance.

All members of the setting community should have access to these policies and all staff should sign to say they have read and understood the contents.

Our exemplar child protection policies have been developed in accordance with the key principles established in the Children Acts 1989 and 2004, related national statutory guidance and local procedures. These documents should be adapted by DSLs and leaders/managers to meet the specific requirements of the individual setting.

2022-23 Updates

The content for 2022-23 was reviewed and published initially in July 2022 with an update (version 3) published in December 2022 following the learning identified from recent safeguarding practice reviews. We recommend schools and settings ensure they are using the most recent template available. Where possible, new, moved, condensed, and updated content is highlighted in yellow.

The Education People make every effort to ensure that the information in our templates are accurate and up to date. If errors are brought to our attention, we will correct them as soon as practicable.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 requires schools and colleges to have “a staff behaviour policy which should, amongst other things, include: acceptable use of technologies, staff/pupil relationships and communications, including the use of social media” and that schools and colleges "should have a clear policy on the use of mobile and smart technology." The EYFS 2021 requires early years providers to "implement a policy and procedures to safeguard children ...must... cover the use of mobile phones and cameras in the setting."

As well as embedding online safety content within our child protection policy templates, the Education Safeguarding Service provides specific policy templates for education settings to adapt.

These templates can be embedded within existing policies or as part of a standalone online safety policy approach according to leadership decisions. Our templates provides a basis for leaders and managers to assist them in writing an effective policy, however will require adaptation to ensure they reflect the settings context, technology use and individual policy decisions.

2022-23 Updates

The policy template content for 2022-23 was reviewed and published in August 2022 following the publication of KCSIE 2022 and EYFS 2021. Where possible, new, moved, condensed, and updated content is highlighted in yellow.

The Education People make every effort to ensure that the information in our templates are accurate and up to date. If errors are brought to our attention, we will correct them as soon as practicable.

AUP Posters

Kent County Council and EiS published AUP posters for use by educational settings. The posters are A3 in size. To print smaller sizes, use the settings provided by your printer (i.e. for A4 reduce to 71%). If supported, set your printer to print borderless.

Additional Online Safety Templates and Guidance

The following documents are available to Kent and Medway schools and settings as free downloads - please log in to your Education People account to access these documents.  The ZIP folder containing these PDFs can be found in the Membership Resources section of your account, as listed in your personalised Products and Resources area.  You can then download the files to your work computer, for ease of access in the future.

  • 'Dealing with Complaints on Social media - Guidance for Headteachers and Managers'
  • 'Image Use Policy Template and Guidance'

For settings outside of Kent/Medway, previous versions can be found on the Kelsi website.

Additional Templates, Guidance and Resources from the Education Safeguarding Service

A number of optional template resources are also available to support DSLs and leaders in educational settings.

Please contact the Education Safeguarding Service to discuss queries regarding our policy templates and guidance.