The DfE has emphasised all school staff must undergo training on the filtering and monitoring of online devices after a coroner questioned the department’s current safeguarding guidelines.
The beefed-up advice forms part of updated keeping children safe in education guidance, published yesterday but which comes into force on September 1.
In December, online safety campaigner Judy Thomas wrote in a Schools Week article that the current safeguarding guidance was “insufficient”.
Thomas’s daughter, Frankie, took her own life in September 2018. On the same day, she had accessed material about violent rape, self-harm and stories that ended in suicide while unsupervised on a school iPad.
