Online safety: requirements and guidance

Understand what arrangements you should have in place to keep pupils safe online, including appropriate filtering and monitoring systems. Get further resources to help you manage online safety in your school.

Updated
on 19 August 2024
See updates
School types: AllSchool phases: AllRef: 13530
Contents
  1. Develop policies that cover online safety
  2. Put in place appropriate filtering and monitoring systems
  3. Take action to prevent online child-on-child abuse 
  4. Teach online safety through the curriculum
  5. Include online safety in staff safeguarding training
  6. Understand Ofsted's expectations
  7. Further guidance and resources

Develop policies that cover online safety

You should include your approach to online safety in your statutory child protection policy

This is explained in paragraph 137 of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE)

Online safety is a key part of safeguarding, which includes 'protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online'.

This is explained in paragraph 3 of KCSIE.

Consider the 4 areas of online safety risks when developing your policy:

  • Content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful content
  • Contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users
  • Conduct: online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm
  • Commerce: risks such as online gambling or phishing/financial scams

See paragraph 135 of KCSIE for examples of each of the areas of risk.

Use our model child protection policy