E-safety - Annual Training for Teachers & Staff

Online safety involves people, teaching, professional practice and technical arrangements. This course helps teachers and other school staff in England recognise how content, contact, conduct and commercial risks can affect pupils’ safety and wellbeing, and connect their response with the school’s wider safeguarding approach.

Eight teaching Modules and purposeful written activities explore evaluating information, harmful contact and peer conduct, educational access, remote teaching, proportionate communication, inclusive learning and local review. Fictional school decisions ask you to separate facts from unknowns and prepare a reasoned next action.

The annual training context supports continuing learning alongside current official reading, local induction, policies and updates. Buying or completing this course does not satisfy every obligation or certify the school’s compliance. This is non-regulated staff awareness; it does not qualify a DSL or provide investigative or technical-system competence. The core school framework is England-specific.

Allow approximately 2 hours 19 minutes, including video learning, independent learning and the final assessment.

💻 What you need

✓ Read or access the learning in a suitable supported format; no prior DSL qualification is required.
✓ Use an internet-connected device and allow time for teaching, eight written activities, official reading and the separate assessment.
✓ Have access to current school safeguarding policies, DSL or deputy contacts, approved communication arrangements and local reporting or escalation routes.
✓ Use fictional information only in activities. Do not include real pupil details, search for harmful material or inspect intimate imagery as proof.

📘 Module 1 – Whole School Online Safety and Annual Refresh

Place online safety within the whole-school safeguarding approach. Explore the four risk areas and connections between online experiences and school life, then distinguish continuing staff learning and local review from purchasing an annual course. Identify the actual policies, reporting routes and contacts needed alongside awareness learning.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Describe the content, contact, conduct and commerce risk areas in a school context.
✓ Explain how online and offline safeguarding concerns can connect.
✓ Distinguish annual safeguarding updates and local review from purchasing a particular course.
✓ Identify the local safeguarding, behaviour and acceptable-use arrangements needed alongside this awareness course.

Fictional workplace application: At a staff briefing, Alex says the school filter means online safety is an IT matter and completing a yearly online course will satisfy every obligation. No audit of the school arrangements or pupil incident is supplied.

Written reflection: Correct both assumptions without certifying compliance. Map the four risk areas to ordinary school examples and name the local arrangements staff must locate.

📘 Module 2 – Evaluating Content and Persuasive Online Design

Consider how presentation, popularity and commercial pressures can influence online choices. Use neutral invented material to practise questions about purpose, source, evidence and corroboration. Plan suitable learning that develops critical evaluation without harmful searches, live persuasion experiments or allegations about real people or products.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Distinguish popularity, confident presentation and commercial prominence from reliable evidence.
✓ Describe how persuasive design and commercial pressures may shape online choices.
✓ Select age-appropriate questions that help pupils evaluate online information.
✓ Explain why classroom examples need careful checking before use.

Fictional workplace application: Morgan plans a lesson using an invented, neutral-looking product claim repeated by several accounts. A paid promotion label is present, but no evidence for the claim is supplied. Morgan has not yet chosen a source-checking activity.

Written reflection: Prepare questions about purpose, source, evidence and commercial influence. Decide what to check before teaching; do not label a real person or product fraudulent.

📘 Module 3 – Recognising Harmful Contact and Peer Conduct

Recognise concerns about contact, exclusion and peer behaviour without assuming an account owner’s identity or motive. Practise a calm, non-blaming response, factual attribution and prompt local reporting. Keep image-handling boundaries clear while leaving specialist DSL incident decisions outside ordinary frontline awareness.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Recognise concerning contact or peer behaviour without treating a single sign as proof.
✓ Explain that online behaviour can affect safety and belonging in school.
✓ Describe a non-blaming first response and prompt local safeguarding report.
✓ State safe boundaries when a report may involve harmful imagery.

Fictional workplace application: A teacher receives a written account that a pupil is repeatedly excluded from a group game and pressured by another account to move to a private channel. The account owner, ages, motive and later events are unknown; no images or messages have been inspected.

Written reflection: Separate the reported facts from assumptions. Explain a supportive response and reporting route without investigating accounts or requesting screenshots as proof.

📘 Module 4 – Filtering Monitoring and Educational Access

Distinguish access-restricting filtering from monitoring that helps identify concerns for assessment. Explore the different school responsibilities and technical limits, then plan an authorised response to educational blocking. Recommendations retain their proper status; this lesson does not teach configuration, system tests or bypasses.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Distinguish preventative filtering from monitoring and recognise their limitations.
✓ Explain the different safeguarding, strategic and technical responsibilities in school arrangements.
✓ Report harmful access, alert concerns and unreasonable educational blocking through local routes.
✓ Explain why staff should seek an authorised decision rather than bypass controls.

Fictional workplace application: A teacher finds a planned, legitimate curriculum resource blocked and proposes using a personal hotspot for the class. No authorisation or review has occurred; no harmful content or monitoring alert is reported.

Written reflection: Draft a factual educational-access request and identify the appropriate school decision route. Explain why bypassing the control is not an ordinary teaching workaround.

📘 Module 5 – Professional Online Teaching and Communication

Plan professional online teaching and pastoral communication using school-approved arrangements. Consider purpose, account boundaries, privacy, participation and individual support before a session starts. Understand the place of contextual senior-leader risk assessment and approval without inventing universal recording, camera, two-adult or one-to-one rules.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Identify approved professional channels and appropriate account boundaries.
✓ Describe privacy and participation matters to plan before an online lesson.
✓ Explain that pastoral one-to-one arrangements require contextual risk assessment and local approval.
✓ Report welfare concerns arising during remote education through the school safeguarding route.

Fictional workplace application: Sam is planning remote pastoral support and suggests using a personal messaging account because it is familiar. No session, local approval, recording decision or privacy assessment has happened.

Written reflection: Identify what Sam should agree with the relevant school leads before starting. Do not invent a universal ban on one-to-one support, a two-adult rule, compulsory recording or cameras-on policy.

📘 Module 6 – Coordinating a Response to an Online Concern

Use an unverified parent report to examine a calm, coordinated school response. Separate frontline reporting from DSL-led assessment and formal communication. Consider how warnings can unintentionally increase exposure, while preserving proportionate targeted support and urgent help where an actual immediate danger requires it.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Describe a calm frontline response to an unverified report about an online challenge.
✓ Distinguish ordinary staff reporting from DSL-led risk assessment and formal communication.
✓ Explain why publicising names or harmful details can increase exposure.
✓ Describe proportionate follow-up and urgent help where immediate danger exists.

Fictional workplace application: A colleague brings the DSL a parent email describing an unnamed online challenge. The school has no confirmed pupil participation or verified harmful content. The colleague proposes a whole-school warning containing the alleged challenge name.

Written reflection: Plan an immediate staff response and questions for the DSL-led assessment. Explain what is unknown, why amplification matters and how a verified immediate danger would change urgency. Do not decide the report is a hoax or claim an incident has been resolved.

📘 Module 7 – Planning Inclusive Online Safety Learning

Plan age- and development-appropriate learning using reviewed resources and accessible routes to seek help. Consider actual individual needs without stereotyping or inventing diagnoses. Connect curriculum, suitable external contributions and parent or carer communication with the school’s wider safeguarding arrangements.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Select learning approaches appropriate to age and stage of development.
✓ Explain why individual needs and changing vulnerability require proportionate support without stereotyping.
✓ Check external teaching resources and visitors for suitability and safeguarding implications.
✓ Describe how curriculum, trusted reporting routes and parent or carer communication can reinforce each other.

Fictional workplace application: Taylor is preparing a mixed-needs class session using an external video advertised as shocking enough to make pupils listen. The video has not been reviewed and no individual pupil needs or lesson-support plan are provided.

Written reflection: Produce a resource-review and adaptation plan using safe examples and accessible reporting routes. Do not infer a diagnosis, disclose individual experiences in class, or use frightening material to demonstrate risk.

📘 Module 8 – Reviewing Local Arrangements and Following Up

Contribute factual information to responsible school leads as technology and needs change. Explore educational blocking, a proposed AI-enabled service and follow-up of an earlier concern without assuming approval, technical capability or closure. Identify an appropriate personal action within the real school arrangements.

By the end of this Module, learners will be able to:

✓ Identify information staff can contribute to a school online-safety review.
✓ Explain why new devices, services and generative-AI use may trigger review between annual checkpoints.
✓ Distinguish recording a reported concern from verifying its cause or closing it.
✓ Set a role-appropriate personal action for checking local arrangements and reporting future concerns.

Fictional workplace application: At an adult staff review, Lee reports repeated legitimate-resource blocking and the planned introduction of an AI-enabled service. No service approval, safeguarding risk assessment or technical capability check has been completed. A previous concern has been passed on but no outcome is supplied.

Written reflection: Write a factual contribution for the responsible school leads, identify decisions requiring DSL/SLT/IT involvement and specify a safe personal follow-up. Do not certify the service or declare the previous concern closed.