Policy guidance

Most online safety policies fail for the same reason: they describe good intentions without recording a decision. A policy that says the school “promotes safe use of technology” tells a member of staff nothing about what to do on a Tuesday afternoon when a year 9 pupil shows them something on a phone.

The test of a policy is whether a member of staff who has never met the safeguarding lead could read it and know what to do in the first ten minutes.

• Who is accountable for online safety, by name and by role, and who covers in their absence.
• What happens when a concern is raised, in order, and where it is recorded.
• What staff are expected to do about their own devices and their own social media presence.
• How filtering and monitoring are configured, and who checks that they still are.
• What the school's position is on personal phones during the day, including sixth form.
• How parents are told about an incident, and by whom.
• What is done when the incident involves pupils messaging each other outside school hours.

In England, the statutory basis is Keeping Children Safe in Education, which sets out what must be covered in safeguarding policy, together with the DfE's non-statutory Teaching Online Safety in Schools guidance on curriculum content. Schools should also account for the KCSIE expectations on filtering and monitoring, and the protected characteristics duties that apply to online conduct.

Online Wise summarises what these mean in practice, but the statutory documents are the authority — not this page. Where a school needs to be certain, it should work from the source documents and from its own local authority or trust guidance.

• School guidance — the overview for safeguarding leads.
• Working with families — how to talk to parents after an incident.
• Online issues — the specific behaviours a policy has to cover.