Last week, King Charles announced parliament’s new plans to “raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing” as well as legislating changes towards curriculum and safeguarding. Having reviewed the proposed changes, we acknowledge the direction to improve standards within the education sector yet highlight the need for more digital safeguarding measures to be included.
What is Being Proposed?
As part of the proposed changes there are a number of areas covered that relate towards the education sector in England, including:
- The strengthening of multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements.
- Requiring all schools to teach the national curriculum - after a curriculum and assessment review is conducted.
- Bringing multi-academy trusts into the inspection system.
- Making changes to legislation around inspecting independent schools.
Digital Safeguards
We have identified the essential need for more digital safeguards to ensure school communities are being fully protected as part of this new direction, mainly the following areas:
- Strengthening filtering and monitoring systems – Ensuring that schools and MATs are appropriately filtering out and detecting harmful and illegal content online including child sexual abuse material and terrorist content.
- Digital safeguards for children’s homes – We commend the Department for Education for setting comprehensive digital standards that enhance online safeguards in schools and colleges across England. However, children's homes—where some of our most vulnerable children reside—remain outside this guidance with little support. We urge the government to introduce equivalent digital safeguarding measures to children’s homes, ensuring they receive the same robust protections to prevent inevitable harm from occurring. This necessary expansion of policy will provide a safer online environment for all children, particularly our most vulnerable.
David Wright CBE (CEO of SWGfL) said:
A new Government means new beginnings and we acknowledge the improved direction towards child protection and safeguarding. We urge the Government to consider the broader scope of online protections though and ensure these identified areas of digital safeguarding are brought in as mandatory practices for all communities who support children and young people. Technology is consistently evolving and responding to current and emerging threats will pave the way for way for a safer online landscape.
