It’s essential that all e-safety incidents in schools are monitored and logged, including recording the outcome and any follow-up action taken. Logging and monitoring also has a part to play in the process of e-safety provision review.
Network activity, security and data management should be logged on an ongoing basis.
Responding to incidents
Technical staff in schools must understand what they are expected to do in these situations and exactly how far their responsibilities extend. There need to be procedures in place for action to be taken if they witness or suspect e-safety incidents. The e-safety co-ordinator should be informed straight away of any incidents.
Network monitoring
Network users should be told that their activity will be monitored and this should be covered in a school’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Being transparent about monitoring will head off a number of potential problems that can arise when e-safety incidents happen.
Users must be made clearly aware of what activity will be monitored. They should also be made aware that stronger monitoring may take place if misuse is suspected.
Following up incidents
By logging and monitoring e-safety incidents, the e-safety co-ordinator can spot patterns in behaviour and act on emerging issues. For example, awareness-raising campaigns or training may be required.
E-safety policies and practices should be reviewed in the light of incident logging and monitoring.
Resources
Case study
John Skillington, Systems Manager, The Minster School
E-safety incidents are logged with myself. A member of staff will fill in a form which details the date when the incident occurred, the name of the student and if necessary the website which was involved in the incident. When this is logged, action will be taken and the relevant form will be put into a folder and stored.
We only get maybe one or two cases a month and they’re normally incidents like flash games. They’re not mega incidents. We write to parents and tell them when a child has been banned from the internet. This has helped as a deterrent to students because they’ll see that their parents will be informed. Logging and monitoring helps us to judge how effective e-safety is within our school. The fewer incidents we have, the better our e-safety is.
