Schools and colleges in England are required by Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 to "ensure their school or college has appropriate filters and monitoring systems in place and regularly review their effectiveness." They should ensure their leadership team and relevant staff have an awareness and understanding of the filtering and monitoring provisions in place, manage them effectively and know how to escalate concerns when identified. They should however also "be careful that "over blocking" does not lead to unreasonable restrictions as to what children can be taught with regards to online teaching and safeguarding".

Schools and childcare providers in England and Wales must also: "ensure children are safe from terrorist and extremist material when access the internet in school, including by establishing levels of filtering" Revised Prevent Duty Guidance: for England and Wales, 2015.

The appropriateness of any filters and monitoring systems are a matter for individual educational settings and will be informed in part, by the risk assessment required by the Prevent Duty and will vary based on the age range of children, the number of children, how often they access IT systems and the proportionality of costs vs risks.

The UK Safer Internet Centre have published guidance for education settings and filtering providers about establishing 'appropriate levels’ of filtering and monitoring.

Where children are being asked to learn online at home schools and colleges should ensure they do so safely. The Education Safeguarding Service have produced a number of guidance documents for schools and settings in response to Covid-19 pandemic. The following links are specific to safeguarding whilst remote learning:

• Online Safety: Considerations and Guidance for Remote Learning - January 2021
  • A template remote learning AUP is available within our AUP templates.
• Online Tools and Platforms Risk Assessment Form - May 2020
• Blog: Remote Learning guidance for SLT and DSLs
• Blog: Online Safety resources

National Guidance

• DfE:
  • Safeguarding and remote education during coronavirus (COVID-19)
  • Review your remote education provision
  • Providing remote education information to parents: template
• SWGfL Safe Remote Learning guidance
• London Grid for Learning Coronavirus guidance
• NSPCC
• Children's Commissioner: Keeping virtual classrooms safe online 
• The Safer Recruitment Consortium addendum to 'Guidance for safer working practice for those working with children and young people in education settings' guidance 

National Cyber Security Centre 

• Video conferencing services: security guidance for organisations
• Video conferencing services: using them securely (advice for individuals & families, self employed & sole traders)

Education settings are directly responsible for ensuring they have the appropriate level of security protection procedures in place in order to safeguard their systems, staff and learners, and should review the effectiveness of these procedures periodically to keep up with evolving cyber-crime technologies.

Guidance on e-Security

• DfE:
  • Schools’ buying strategy
  • Using technology in education
  • Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges - standards schools and colleges should meet on cyber security, user accounts and data protection.
• NEN
• NSCS

Also see our section on Cybercrime and Commerce