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.