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On 12 March, Lord Laming published his report The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report. The Government accepted all of his recommendations and has now published an action plan, setting out its detailed response.

http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/DCSF-Laming.pdf

The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has written to schools to highlight the importance of this action plan and of the role that teachers and other staff have in keeping children safe from abuse. In particular the following para will be of interest to members of this list:

“32. Ofsted have also designed the new school inspection framework which will apply from September 2009 so that it will have a stronger focus on safeguarding. The current inspection framework already includes a judgement about whether safeguarding arrangements in schools are satisfactory but this will be strengthened in the new framework with a grading on a scale from 1(outstanding) to 4(inadequate) for a school’s safeguarding arrangements. Any school which receives a grade of 4 will also be likely to be awarded an inadequate grade for its overall performance and will need therefore to make urgent improvements. These arrangements will ‘raise the bar’ about the importance of safeguarding for schools and will also facilitate the identification and dissemination of best practice.”

Many thanks to the SafetyNet list  http://lists.becta.org.uk/mailman/listin…) for this item, and the following useful question and answer:

Question: Clearly it’s good practice for schools to seek parents’ permission for children to use the internet in school. Is this position just advice or underpinned by a statutory requirement? Is on admission to the school enough or should we be asking schools to do this annually?

Answer from Ruth Hammond: Over a number of years I have not been able to find any requirement for schools to do this - if it exists then please let me know!

In order to save schools a huge administrative burden each year then I would suggest a sensible way forward is that reference is made to the school esafety policy/internet use in the Home school agreement which is statutory. www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/parentalinvolvement/hsa/

So rather than asking parental permission to use the internet you are ensuring that parents and pupils understand the school policy.