Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) requires all schools and colleges to have “appropriate” monitoring systems in place, and “regularly review their effectiveness.” This instruction is important, but due to the unique needs of each educational setting, KCSIE offers limited guidance on how schools can fulfil it. This article provides practical advice for SLTs, DSLs and ITs on when and how to review your monitoring system effectively.
Why does monitoring need to be reviewed?
Schools, colleges and MATs are required to have some form of monitoring in place to identify risks revealed in what students do, say and share on digital devices.
Even settings that procure advanced digital monitoring systems cannot afford to have a “set and forget” attitude. The digital landscape and the devices used to access it are constantly evolving. At the same time, student and security needs adjust as new learning environments and potential threats emerge. Educators have a responsibility to ensure that monitoring systems are working effectively in the face of these changing factors.
Reviewing your monitoring solution will help you ensure that you are maximising your current system’s potential, while highlighting any areas that require improvement or further investigation. Monitoring system reviews can be conducted at the same time as filtering system reviews, and both can be incorporated into your annual online safety review.
Monitoring system reviews can be conducted at the same time as filtering system reviews, and both can be incorporated into your annual online safety review.
Who is responsible for reviewing monitoring systems?
The Department for Education’s Filtering and Monitoring Standards for Schools and Colleges outline the specific requirements educational settings must fulfil with their monitoring systems. It states that “the review should be conducted by members of the senior leadership team, the designated safeguarding lead, and IT support. It should also involve the responsible governor.”
When it comes to specific roles, it is the senior leadership team (SLT) who have overall responsibility for “reviewing the effectiveness of your provision”. Designated safeguarding leads (DSLs) are responsible for “providing governors with assurance that (...) monitoring systems are working effectively and reviewed regularly”, and IT support should complete any necessary “actions following concerns or system checks.”
As DSLs take lead responsibility for the day-to-day management of monitoring systems, their knowledge in particular will be vital to the assessment process. Similarly, IT expertise is required to measure and make adjustments to the technical aspects of monitoring systems.
When should you review your monitoring system(s)?
As a general rule, the Department for Education (DfE) directs schools to conduct reviews of monitoring systems at least once every academic year.
However, certain scenarios may trigger the need for additional reviews. This includes when:
- A safeguarding risk is identified
- There is a change in working practice, for example, if BYOD is implemented
- New technology is introduced to the school
- There are major software updates
- The technical configuration of networks or devices changes
Furthermore, if there are any system or equipment changes, schools should seek assurance from vendors that “monitoring solutions will continue to work on all school-managed devices.”
How do you review your monitoring system?
When reviewing monitoring systems, it is essential to look beyond the technology itself and evaluate your overall monitoring strategy.. This includes assessing the functionality of monitoring technology, how well the school community understands the monitoring process, and the effectiveness of associated policies and processes.
Your assessment should take into account your setting’s specific risk profile. At a student level, this means considering factors such as age ranges, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and digital resilience. Additionally, consider how your school distributes and manages devices and any related safeguarding policies you have in place.
Performing monitoring reviews with your school’s risk profile in mind will help you identify specific blind spots, as well as areas where additional processes or equipment are required.
Assessment
Set-up
Assess whether monitoring is effectively applied to all school-managed devices and services. Ideally, deployment of monitoring solutions should be fairly quick and simple, with consistent levels of monitoring achievable across different devices and school sites, if necessary.
Example questions:
Are school-managed devices that are taken off premises still subject to effective monitoring?
If our school was to expand across multiple sites, could effective monitoring be extended to serve these new locations?
Functionality
Consider the extent to which your monitoring system is working effectively and how easy it is to adjust its settings to meet your needs. Examine any technical limitations that need to be addressed, as well as additional functions that could improve it.
Example questions:
Does the monitoring system use human moderation to improve accuracy and reduce false positives?
Are DSLs able to get immediate notifications of potential threats to health or life?
Additional monitoring features to consider can be found in the UK Safer Internet Centre’s (UK SIC) Appropriate Monitoring Guide.
Understanding
Evaluate how well school staff understand monitoring and the procedures they should follow to raise or respond to monitoring incidents. Teachers should have, for example, a basic understanding of the difference between filtering and monitoring and the important reasons these systems need to be in place.
Example questions:
Do all school staff know how to raise safeguarding concerns linked to monitoring?
Are the staff members in charge of monitoring trained to use any technical equipment that is used to monitor students?
Processes, results and outcomes
Reflect on the effectiveness of your current monitoring processes and whether they are helping you to identify vulnerable children in the most efficient way. Examining reports produced by monitoring systems, and any recorded outcomes, can help in this process.
Example questions:
Are monitoring alerts delivered in an appropriate manner and stored in a way that makes them easy to navigate?
Does the information we collect from monitoring present new learning opportunities and inform school curriculum?
Please note: These are examples of core aspects of monitoring to assess - it is not an exhaustive list of all areas that need to be reviewed. Your setting’s specific needs will dictate how extensive the monitoring review needs to be.
Response
When the assessment stage is complete, it’s time to review the results, identify areas that require investigation, and decide on action points. The SLT may want to assign specific tasks to the DSL or IT support. For example, addressing a problem around monitoring consistency across devices is likely to be the responsibility of IT staff, while incompatibilities with safeguarding policy may fall to the DSL to rectify.
Once any action points have been established and assigned, the SLT and chosen governor should establish a realistic timeframe for implementing improvements and reassessing any problem areas.
If an identified issue is not fixable by adjusting the settings of existing provisions, your school may need to consider procuring additional monitoring solutions, or changing vendors.
Record the results
The results of online safety reviews, including monitoring assessments, must be recorded. The DfE specifies that these recordings should be made available to “anyone who is entitled to inspect that information.” With this in mind, recordings should be clear, thorough and stored in a suitable place.
Logs of monitoring checks should include:
- When assessments took place
- Who carried out the checks
- What was tested (for example, specific devices and locations)
- Actions taken
- The results
- Any future recommendations
Maintaining an effective monitoring system
Regularly reviewing your monitoring strategy is a vital part of keeping children safe. It allows you to understand the changing needs of students and staff, and identify potential risks that have emerged since your last assessment.
To ensure you are up-to-date with the latest monitoring guidelines, refer to our guide on the DfE Web Filtering and Monitoring Standards Updates.
