Smoothwall recently hosted a roundtable discussion with leading safeguarding figures from further education. Kay Burton-Williams of BMet College and Nicola McLean & Diana Brown from United Colleges Group shared their experiences of using digital monitoring to spot online risks.
This article highlights 4 key insights they revealed in the discussion. A video of the full roundtable is available via the link at the bottom of the page.
Filtering vs monitoring: A refresher
Filtering manages access to websites and web pages. It stops students being exposed to harmful or inappropriate material.
Monitoring identifies risks in what students do, say and share online and in digital spaces, including emails, documents and chatrooms. It spots risks and alerts staff to students suspected of being vulnerable.
DSL insights on digital monitoring in colleges
1. “I was really finding myself getting quite frantic with the risks that we had as an organisation, and thinking this is just not good enough.”
The prevalence of online risks means that, particularly for colleges, the question is not whether to implement monitoring, but whether they can afford not to.
Risks including grooming, radicalisation and self-harm are common in FE settings, but are unlikely to be spotted with filtering or eyes and ears alone. Without early detection, these risks escalate, causing significant harm to students and requiring more resources to address.
For Nicola McLean, monitoring became imperative when she realised that relying on filtering alone left her team blind to many of the risks impacting their students. It also meant that the limited risks that were visible were only shown to IT staff, who often lacked that critical safeguarding background:
“I was like, how are you picking up this? How are you picking up that? And I was driving them mad and I was really finding myself getting quite frantic with the risks that we had as an organisation and thinking, this is just not good enough.”
When United Colleges Group adopted digital monitoring, previously hidden risks were now clear for the safeguarding team to see: “It was obvious once we had it installed and it was working as it should, just how much we were missing.”
2. "The reaction is immediate, because you get the alerts and you know what you need to do.”
All DSLs know that speed is vital when it comes to identifying and stopping risks. While word of mouth reports can be a useful source of information for further education safeguarders, gathering and confirming the accuracy of information takes time - time in which risks can develop.
For Nicola, a key value of digital monitoring is that it provides DSLs with real-time information they can quickly act on. “It comes down to: how fast would the reaction time be? With the digital monitoring system, the reaction is immediate, because you get the alerts, you know what you need to do.”
With human-moderated digital monitoring, alerts are sent with contextual information, to ensure clarity and support decision-making. Nicola’s colleague Diana Brown found this aspect to be essential in helping them effectively deal with a serious grooming incident: “We knew it was happening, but (...) we didn’t really have anything tangible to go with, to follow through with. It gave us the evidence that we needed.”
Digital monitoring helps DSLs to perform their roles more effectively by enabling early detection of risk and providing the information needed to perform early interventions.
3. “Through the monitoring aspect you start to build a baseline of data. You start to be able to say, actually, this is a trend.”
Digital monitoring can spot online risks of varying threat levels. Smoothwall Monitor, for example, categorises risks as low, medium and high. High risks can be very serious and may trigger an immediate phone call to the DSL, but low-level risks are stored in a dashboard, for staff to review at a convenient time.
In isolation, a single low-level risk may not require any action to be taken, but viewed as part of a college’s wider safeguarding picture, they can reveal concerning patterns or trends.
In this way it acts as an education piece for DSLs, as Kay-Burton Williams has found: “Through the monitoring aspect, you start to build a baseline of data, you start to be able to say actually, this is a trend.”
Safeguarding teams can use this data to improve safeguarding strategies. For example, if cyberbullying is shown to be a growing issue within a college, corrective action can be taken, such as introducing lessons or holding group discussions on the topic.
In this way, digital monitoring isn’t just about increasing visibility of serious risks - it also acts as an education resource for safeguarding teams, enabling them to pinpoint the specific needs of their students and adapt where necessary.
4. “This ultimately in some cases is about saving people’s lives.”
Without monitoring in place, safeguarders will miss students at risk. In colleges, it’s no exaggeration to say that this can mean missing vital clues that point to self-harm or suicide ideation. Kay has seen this first-hand:
“The suicide element. That’s really something that we see quite a lot of and that for me is where the real value of monitoring comes in (...) this ultimately in some cases is about saving people’s lives.”
Students will sometimes write suicidal thoughts in documents, emails or messages to others. Even if they type these ideations and delete them, digital monitoring can detect the risk and alert DSLs - so vulnerable students quickly receive the support they need.
It is because of these high stakes that the Department for Education requires all colleges to have monitoring in place.
You can watch the full roundtable with Nicola, Diana and Kay, on our dedicated Digital Monitoring in Further Education page.
The time for digital monitoring in further education is now
If you have any questions about digital monitoring in FE, or would like to book a quick demo of Monitor for your setting, contact our FE expert Sean Lazenby at sean.lazenby@smoothwall.com. He’s happy to help.
