Keeping children and young people safe online

Keeping children and young people safe online

We’re monitoring the online activity of 80,000 children and young people protecting them from radicalisation, extremism, cyberbullying, pornography and grooming.

The Department for Education sets out the legal duties schools must follow to safeguard children and young people in the guidance document ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’. Entrust are supporting 180 schools to meet their duties by protecting children and young people whilst they are using school devices.

The Entrust Digital Monitoring Service keeps pupils safe by monitoring all offline and online activity, capturing and alerting teachers to potentially harmful content or behaviour.

Monitoring software can generate thousands of captures per week for large schools taking up a huge amount of time for schools to analyse. There’s no quick way of identifying a genuine concern and the task demands a huge amount of time to be effective. Entrust alleviate this burden and dedicate the appropriate time and expertise to monitor the captures effectively, raising concerns in a timely manner.

The activity is captured and graded according to the potential severity on a scale of 1 to 5 in line with guidance from Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, NSPCC, Internet Watch Foundation, British Standards Institute Specification PAS 74: Internet Safety - Access control systems for the protection of children online. 

Captures are graded in accordance with the following risk levels:

• Grade 1: False positive - no problem
• Grade 2: Off task, cyberslacking
• Grade 3: Potentially unsafe content or behaviour
• Grade 4: Potentially Serious, non-urgent child safety threat
• Grade 5: Potentially Serious and urgent child safety threat - present or imminent danger

If any captures showing grade 3, 4 or 5 are detected, Entrust flag this with the school, enabling the school to take appropriate action.  In 2019, Entrust reviewed around 95,000 captures each month and escalated 1161 captures graded 4 or 5.

The Entrust Digital Monitoring Service provides schools with independent monitoring and an audit trail of action, but most importantly, it flags potential concerns and safeguards our children and young people.