Blog – Latest stories tagged 'staff_training'

Only 68% of schools reported that all staff are receiving regular e-safety training and updates.

In 2012, Ofsted released their inspecting e-safety briefing, placing an emphasis on educating young people about staying safe online, while providing a safe environment in which to explore the web.

In the six years that have followed, a great deal has changed, not least the available technology and indeed how young people are connecting to the virtual and online world.

From a school perspective, the greatest change has come in the form of responsibility. Gone are the days when e-safety was considered the domain of the IT teacher – now the responsibility lies with the senior management team in the form of a designated safeguarding lead.

To that end, e-safety is no-longer a separate entity but is incorporated in the DfE guidance relating to the wider safeguarding issues, primarily set out the in the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, which was updated at the beginning of September.

One of the key elements of the guidance is that of staff training, with the KCSIE stating that:

Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure that all staff undergo safeguarding and child protection training (including online safety) at induction. The training should be regularly updated.
And
In addition, all staff should receive regular safeguarding and child protection updates (for example, via email, e-bulletins, staff meetings) as required, and at least annually, to provide them with relevant skills and knowledge to safeguard children effectively.

To underline this requirement the “Inspecting safeguarding in early years, education and skills settings” Ofsted guidance issued earlier this month advises inspections to include evidence that:

staff, leaders, governors and supervisory bodies (where appropriate) and volunteers receive appropriate training on safeguarding at induction, that is updated regularly.

However, it seems that many schools are currently not providing adequate staff training on internet safety. According to figures extracted from the E-safety Support e-safety checklist, in the 2017/18 academic year, only 67.8% of users who logged progress in this area reported that they were fulfilling this requirement.

In addition, less than half (48.2%) of governing bodies were considered to be is involved the e-safety policy and practice within schools, while only 59% of users reported having an effective e-safety policy in place.

With the safeguarding remit ever widening, it’s not hard to understand why some schools may not be meeting the DfE requirements for e-safety – budgets, time and the expanding areas of risk which need to be considered make the safeguarding arena a challenging one to keep up with. However, we must remember that “Early years settings, schools, and further education and skills institutions should be safe environments where children (that is, everyone under the age of 18), learners and vulnerable adults can learn and develop” and having trained staff is essential to ensuring this is the case.

Online e-safety training available from Safeguarding Essentials

Our online training courses are simple to distribute and monitor. They are a cost effective way to make sure your whole school community receives regular up-to-date training. With no 'per-user' costs, you can distribute the training to as many staff, parents, governors and pupils as you need and can repeat the training as often as necessary.

There are currently 13 online training courses for staff covering a range of safeguarding topics - a full list of courses can be viewed here

Review your e-safety provision with our interactive online checklist

The statistics quoted are taken from our interactive online e-safety checklist, which is available to all Safeguarding Essentials members. The 9 point checklist gives you an outline of the necessary action or procedure that needs to take place in your school, with references to additional information and support if you need them. Find out more

Subsidised memberships available

Since 2013, we have been supporting schools across the UK and beyond to deliver consistent, outstanding practice in online safety. Recently, we have added resources to our service to address wider safeguarding requirements. To date, our online training has been completed over 130,000 times.

However, we recognise that some of the schools who need the greatest support are those with the least resource. That’s why we have teamed up with our partners at Friendly WiFi to offer subsidised membership to those most in need - up to 100% discounts are available to qualifying schools. Discover your discount now!

Continued Professional Development (CPD) for school staff is critical in providing children with the right information and education to stay safe online.

Whether you’re an architect, an IT programmer or a worker in a fast food chain, CPD plays a crucial part in developing human ability, improving working practice and enabling advancement. Take it away and we find our knowledge becomes antiquated, our skills dated and our clients’ trust and confidence eroded. For some professions, a lack of continued training doesn’t just carry commercial consequences. It can also have a serious impact on people’s health and wellbeing.

CPD has never been more important than for those who have a responsibility for the care and protection of others, particularly children. Whilst all state schools have five days set aside by the Government (known as inset days) when schools are closed to children but open for teacher training, many believe this isn’t enough. In February this year, following a report by the Education Select Committee, Schools Week reported that MPs had called for a national CPD annual entitlement. The committee, who has been compiling written and oral evidence on teacher recruitment and retention since 2015, urged the Government to “recognise its own role in promoting the professional development of teachers”, including a “central statement of annual CPD entitlement” for each teacher, which would help improve teacher retention rates. The report stated teachers in England have no entitlement to CPD – even though teachers in Scotland are entitled to 35 hours a year, with teachers in Singapore given 100 hours a year. They also recommended the Government release “targeted funding” for CPD, and said Ofsted should check schools are encouraging CPD during its inspections.

With teachers’ time being squeezed to the optimum with marking, lesson planning and managing those everyday unplanned incidents, it can leave little time for training. On-site training can be difficult to organise and requires a large group of staff in order to realise the best value from the costs imposed. This means using inset days, organising time outside the school day or taking staff out of lessons that then need to covered by somebody else.

With technology evolving at such a rapid pace, online safety training in particular is not something that can just be held once a year, ticked off the list and then scheduled for a refresh at an inset day in a year’s time. Children are discovering new apps, games and forums continuously and the risk landscape is constantly shifting. In January of this year, research commissioned by Besa (British Education Suppliers Association) called for e-safety to become a part of every teacher’s ongoing CPD when a survey of 1,300 ICT lead teachers revealed that around half thought that teachers lacked the required e-safety training. The research stated that “there’s a wide range of jargon and terminology that a pupil may be using, both in reference to drugs and radicalisation that teachers really struggle to keep on top of.”

But with budgets squeezed and teachers’ time at a premium, how do we ensure teachers and supporting school staff receive the e-safety training that they need? The answer comes in taking this training online. Online courses can provide a better alternative to holding group training sessions, giving teachers and staff more flexibility when it comes to the time they choose for their training. Rather than having to block out a certain date and time, teachers can complete the training at a time convenient to them. Online training sessions also have the advantage of being much cheaper than bringing in a dedicated training company.

So, with CPD very much on the education agenda, is it time you reviewed the e-safety training in your school? With an increased emphasis on providing children with the knowledge they need to use the Internet responsibly, it’s more important than ever that we recognise that all school staff play an important role in imparting e-safety knowledge and advice, not just the teachers.

Review our training courses today for free
E-safety Support provides CPD certified teacher training. Whilst some other online training providers charge on a per user or per course basis, E-safety Support is different. Our membership structure means that the whole school pays just one annual fee to access all the e-safety courses available. There’s no restriction on how many of your school community can receive the training so teachers, senior leaders, governors and support staff can all receive the same level of training as and when they need it. To preview our courses today with no obligation, sign up here for a free membership to E-safety Support. Premium Plus members can distribute the training by logging into your E-safety Support dashboard.

A simple to use online service for the delivery of staff training.

According to recent figures released by the DfE, teacher training is shifting further away from universities, with school-based teacher training places rising from 58% in 2015 to 64% in 2017

But with the ever-expanding list of training requirements set out by the DfE and a lack of budgets to fund all the additional training, it’s not uncommon for schools to train just one member of staff on a chosen subject. It then falls on that teacher to disseminate the information to the rest of their colleagues.

Getting all the relevant members of staff in one place at one time to conduct the training is no mean feat and is invariably going to impact on the teachers already packed timetable. So, could online training provide the most cost effective and time saving solution?

Imagine a system where you can quickly and easily convert your training material into an online course. In just a couple of clicks, send out your training to all the relevant staff who can then complete the training at a time to suit them and you can sit back and watch the results come in.

No need to imagine – TrainingToolz does just that.

This simple to use online service can be mastered in minutes, allowing you to take your content and create an online training course in a very short space of time.

When your material is ready, simply choose your candidates and send out a link directly to them from the system.

You can then monitor the activity, check responses and send out reminders all from the straight-forward dashboard.

Get started for free

Whether you need to deliver just one training course, or are responsible for delivering staff training throughout the year, TrainingToolz can help. But first you need to create your course.

To make things easy, TrainingToolz allows you to do this for free. So, you can try out the system with absolutely no obligation. You only begin paying for membership when you start implementing your training and at only £25 per month, with no contracts or tie-ins it’s a cost-effective way to create and deliver internal staff training.

To find out more and to get started with a free account visit TrainingToolz.com