School Whole-School Online Safety Implementation Plan

This plan is for maintained and academy primary and secondary schools in England. Its use should be adapted to the school's size, context, pupil needs, existing policies, partnerships and available information about current online-safety issues.

School context

This plan applies to [school name] and should be read alongside the school's existing policies and arrangements. The school should record the relevant context, including its phase, size, pupil needs, existing online-safety arrangements, relevant partnerships and current information about online-safety issues affecting its pupils.

The school should identify how this plan reflects its primary or secondary phase, the needs of its pupils, and the support available from families, the community and other relevant partners.

1. Whole-school approach

The school should embed teaching about online safety and harms within a whole-school approach. Teaching should be supported by all relevant aspects of school life, including the school's culture, ethos, environment, and partnerships with families and the community.

The school should describe how online-safety principles are reflected in [school culture and ethos], [school environment], [safeguarding practice], [family partnerships], and [community partnerships].

The approach should connect online-safety and online-harms education with the school's wider work so that provision is not limited to lessons alone.

2. Staff training and resources

The school should provide staff with access to up-to-date, appropriate online-safety training and resources. These should enable staff to cover the required content confidently and in a way that is relevant to their pupils' lives.

The school should set out how staff training and resources will be kept appropriate for [pupil age range], [pupil needs], and the online-safety issues identified through information available to the school.

The school should use information available to it to review its practices and ensure that issues facing its pupils are covered in a timely manner. The plan should record how relevant information will inform changes to teaching, support or other school practice.

3. Meeting differing pupil needs

The school should consider that any pupil can be vulnerable online and that vulnerability can fluctuate with age, developmental stage and personal circumstance.

The school should consider how to tailor its online-safety teaching and support so that pupils who may be more susceptible to online harm, including looked-after children and pupils with special educational needs, receive the information and support they need.

Tailoring may need to address differences in teaching content, pastoral support, accessibility and safeguarding responses. The school should describe the adaptations relevant to [identified pupil groups] and [accessibility arrangements].

4. Engagement with staff, pupils, parents and carers

The school should proactively engage staff, pupils, parents and carers in activities that promote the school's agreed principles of online safety.

Where appropriate to the school's context, programmes may be co-designed with pupils, parents and carers so that they reflect emerging issues that those groups are hearing about or facing online.

The school may also use peer-to-peer support to help pupils stay safe online. If peer support is used, the school should describe its purpose, boundaries and connection with the school's wider online-safety arrangements.

The planned engagement arrangements for [staff engagement], [pupil engagement], [parent and carer engagement], [co design activity], and [peer support arrangement] should be recorded here.

5. Responding to emerging issues

The school should use information available to it to identify issues affecting its pupils and to review whether its practices and teaching address those issues in a timely manner.

The school should record how information about current online-safety issues will be considered, how relevant changes to teaching or support will be identified, and how those changes will be reflected in [school response arrangements].

6. Local implementation arrangements

The school should complete this plan with its local arrangements, including [implementation lead or team], [relevant existing policies], [key partnerships], [current online safety priorities], and [planned review frequency].

Implementation should remain proportionate to the school's size and context and should reflect the needs of its pupils, its existing policies, its partnerships and the information available about current online-safety issues.