The Association of
Adult and Child Online Safety Specialists

During this period of isolation in relation to the COVID19 virus schools are receiving a lot of advice from a myriad of sources on how to cope with remote education and how to keep children safe online. There has also been a huge increase in the amount of time that children are spending online with families trying to juggle working from home, their children’s education and their family’s wellbeing.

AACOSS members are familiar with a great deal of the advice being offered by both commercial companies and voluntary organisations, some very good and some not so. In order to assist schools and staff with understanding current tools, security issues, safeguarding and reporting we’ve put together a short list of things to think about. All members of AACOSS have individual specialisations and we’re available for questions and support during these uncertain times, you can contact us individually via the AACOSS website

In a moment I’m going to be giving you some important points to consider before you consider remote learning but our advice is that if you’re going down this route and you’re using a video feature we recommend you use pre-recorded videos rather than live streaming. The reason is that going live adds a whole other level of complexity and if you’ve never done this before and you haven’t got all your policy processes in place this is no time to start experimenting. London Grid for Learning have put a great article together of things to think about before you live stream and there’s a link to that article below this video.

So with that said I just want to offer some important points followed by a few further points to consider

Important Points

Policy – Schools already have a clear duty of care and obligations in relation to child protection and statutory guidance affirms those obligations, but you also need to update your child protection policy in response to the pandemic and to save you some time Louis Donald who is the Trust Safeguarding Manager at Stowe Valley Multi Academy Trust has kindly given access to their draft policy which you can download from the link below the video.

Connectivity – consider the extent to which children in families without wi-fi or devices will be disadvantaged. Not every family is able to afford the required technology and even if they do, this may be a shared device. Equally some families will have no broadband at all and might be constrained by 4G or even 3G.

Platform – you may already have a learning platform or VLE, but if you’re using Google Classroom or Office 365 already then you can use either Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. We’re seeing a lot of good feedback with Microsoft Teams, but a lot of schools and organizations are using Zoom and you may have seen some of the security and privacy concerns around this. Zoom are responding pretty quickly to concerns but equally this catch-up gives a sense of unease.

We definitely don’t recommend using the free social media apps like Houseparty, Facebook and Whatsapp for a variety of reasons such as age restrictions, data protection and personal information harvesting, but also remember that there should be a clear audit trail just in case something goes wrong. Regarding the audit trail, some organizations suggest you should record the live stream, others say you shouldn’t. We recommend you do record because of the need for an audit trail, but again this adds complexity, because if you’re going to record there may be circumstances when you need explicit consent of all users to comply with data protection requirements, it can’t be implied consent, and that explicit consent will depend on the age of the child, whether faces are being shown, what you’re talking about and much more. Under 13 only the parent or guardian can give permission, but students 13 and over can give their own consent. But what do you do if they don’t give consent? And if you are going to record, do you know where and how to store that data securely?

As with everything at the moment, we find ourselves in less than ideal circumstances and there needs to be an element of pragmatism, it won’t be possible to tick every box, but you have to carry out a risk assessment and get approval before you do anything.

Finally on this point, if you’re using a non-educational specific platform, ensure you’re using a school account, don’t set up a personal account and use that.

Security – whatever platform you use, ensure that it’s locked and password protected. Don’t share the details with students over public channels such as social media, and ensure your students don’t share the details either.

Oversight – It’s a good idea to ensure that another member of staff is overseeing what is happening via these platforms to ensure that everyone is safe and any incidents are reported.

Reporting – have a means where students can report concerns such as a dedicated email address so that they can report any issues. Don’t use personal contact details.

Safeguarding and data protection – finally, before you do anything you must consult with your designated safeguarding lead and your data protection officer to ensure that you’ve got all the right boxes ticked and any required risk assessments have been carried out, going back to a point I made earlier, this isn’t the time to experiment.

Further considerations

So you’ve decided you’re going to provide remote learning, I just want to offer up some further important points for consideration, most of which will hopefully be common sense but they’re all worth mentioning:

Keep it professional – whatever remote learning you’re delivering, and particularly if it’s video, language must be professional and everybody should be wearing suitable clothing. In other words, just because it’s remote, it’s still a classroom and your school code of conduct and behaviour policy should be applied. This also means that computers and devices should be in appropriate spaces, not in bedrooms.

Live classes should last a reasonable length of time, or the session may prevent the family getting on with their day or parent’s work time on the device. Students required to respond to online notifications and deadlines to upload their work can feel anxious and overwhelmed. Remote learning should not involve synchronous online learning only. Some teachers recommend weekly assignments, podcasts, videos and slide presentations.

Remember that some students may not engage, some families may be coping with illness, bereavement or struggles to get food or money. Children with autism spectrum conditions may find it difficult to accept that ‘school’ work should be done at home – they often find ordinary homework difficult to accept and their levels of anxiety will be higher than usual and may lead to more panic attacks

And finally – this is a great time to reinforce those simple online safety messages. They’re always important, but right now is more important than ever.

Summary

We can’t possibly hope to cover everything and every situation but hope that the pointers given in this video give a little clarity to the things you need to be thinking about, even if that clarity is that all of this is too difficult and there’s no way you can do it with the complete assurance that every safeguarding and data protection angle has been covered. But also remember that there needs to be a degree of flexibility and pragmatism and that’s where your risk assessment comes in.