School Online-Safety Governance Review Procedure

This procedure is optional guidance for maintained and academy primary and secondary schools in England. It is intended for use by the governing board or trustees alongside the school's existing safeguarding and governance arrangements.

Purpose

Use this procedure to structure a governing-board or trustee review of online safety and to support school leaders in keeping children safe online. The review should use the governing-board questions adopted by [school name] as its framework.

This procedure is guidance rather than a separate statutory requirement. The governing board or trustees should apply it only where it is appropriate to the school's existing arrangements.

Roles

The governing board or trustees lead the governance review. The person responsible for presenting the online-safety arrangements is [online safety lead role]. The clerk or other person responsible for governance records is [governance record owner].

Procedure

1. Arrange the review

Add the online-safety governance review to the agenda for [meeting name or reference] on [meeting date]. Confirm who will present the school's current online-safety arrangements and who will record the discussion.

2. Use the governance questions

Use the governing-board questions as the framework for the discussion. Consider how the questions support school leaders to keep children safe online, and relate the discussion to the circumstances and existing arrangements of [school name].

3. Review online-safety policies

Review the school's current online-safety policies as part of governing-board or trustee oversight of online-safety provision. Record the policy title or titles considered, the current version or date shown on each policy, and any relationship to the school's safeguarding and governance arrangements.

4. Discuss the implications

Ask the school leader to explain any matters arising from the governance questions or policy review. Keep the discussion focused on how the school's arrangements support school leaders to keep children safe online.

5. Record actions and reasonable decisions

Record the main points considered, any action agreed, the person responsible for an agreed action, and the intended review point recorded by [school name]. Where no further action is agreed, record the reasonable decision and the basis stated during the discussion.

6. Follow up through existing arrangements

Refer agreed actions through [existing safeguarding or governance route]. Update the relevant online-safety policy or other governance record only where the governing board, trustees, or the responsible school leader decides that an update is appropriate.

Review record

The review record should identify the meeting or review date, the people involved, the governing-board questions used, the online-safety policies considered, the actions agreed or reasonable decisions made, and the route for follow-up.

Store the record in [governance record location] in accordance with the school's existing governance arrangements.