Understanding the complexities of digital safeguarding can be a difficult task when balancing the day to day needs of your staff and students. As the Department for Education’s guidelines and recommendations surrounding digital safeguarding evolve, it is paramount we remain vigilant with our school’s online access and behaviours.
But never fear, with over 200 years of combined experience digitally safeguarding over 450 schools and 200,000 students, we’ve got your back. Take a look below at our digital safeguarding checklist, a handy guide to ensure your School is DfE compliant and Ofsted ready.
Internet Connectivity
Ensuring your school has a suitable broadband connection is vital with the growing dependency of online resources and in-classroom activities. Having a strong and reliable connection enables teachers to have confidence when utilising online resources, it saves money through cloud-based solutions rather than on-site technical infrastructure and it also provides flexibility to future-proof your school.
Primary schools should have a minimum 100Mbps download speed and a minimum of 30Mbps upload speed
Secondary schools should have a connection with the capacity to deliver 1Gbps download and upload speed
This should be provided using a full fibre connection through either a leased line or FTTP connection. Your broadband should also be supported by a backup connection, according to DfE standards. Ensuring your school can mitigate against a single point of failure.
Internet and Filtering
To maintain compliant with the Department for Education’s Digital and Technological standards, your primary or secondary school must have an appropriate IT security and safeguarding system.
This ensures staff and students are safeguarded from harmful and inappropriate online material, giving them flexibility to learn in a safe and secure environment and equipping teachers with the necessary tools and resources to identify, intervene and escalate any concerns where appropriate. The DfE requirements state your school must have:
Content filtering system
Secure firewall as part of your internet and network systems
How Can We Help Improve Your Digital Safeguarding?
Getting to grips with your school’s digital safeguarding requirements is no mean feat. Now you’ve read through our checklist and you’re up to scratch, it’s the perfect time to assess your current solution. Are you compliant? Is your current solution suitable for the size of your school? The great news is Coconnect is here to help. With our mission to connect and protect students, teachers and parents online, there isn’t anything we don’t know about school connectivity. So, let’s have a chat. Whether is be school broadband, filtering and monitoring or firewall solutions, we’ve got you covered.
