Safeguarding & Online Safety

Safeguarding

We take very seriously the responsibility to protect and safeguard the welfare of children and young people in our care. Our safeguarding policy sets out how the school discharges its statutory responsibilities relating to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children who are pupils at our schools.

• Safeguarding Policy
• Safeguarding Leaflet

Designated Safeguarding Lead is Sarah Storey. Our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads are Helen Khinich, Francine Murray and Maria Koutsmani. For safeguarding enquiries, email safeguarding@kilburngrangeschool.org.uk.

Operation Encompass

Kilburn Grange School takes part in a project called Operation Encompass. Operation Encompass directly connects the Metropolitan Police service with us to ensure that support is provided for children living with, or have been exposed to, domestic abuse in their homes. Rapid provision of support within the school environment will enable the child to be better safeguarded against the short, medium and long-term effects of domestic abuse.

We are keen to offer the best support possible to all our pupils and believe that working collaboratively with pupils, the Metropolitan Police service and parents will be extremely beneficial for all those involved. To find out more about Operation Encompass, read this letter from our Headteacher Ms Khinich.

Online Safety

We know that supporting your children with online safety isn’t easy. Here are some helpful documents with advice on keeping your children safe online. We also send out regular updates related to online safety as part our newsletter.

• See the poster we use to help children understand the different components of online safety when using the internet: Kilburn Grange School Stay Safe on the Internet Poster
• Childnet have an excellent informative leaflet for parents to help support children online: Childnet Supporting Young People Online Leaflet
• Translation of the leaflet above into several languages.

 Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP)

The National Crime Agency's Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) helps children and young people. CEOP offers help if a young person (up to 18) has been forced or tricked into taking part in sexual activity with anyone online or in the real world. CEOP also offer advice and resources to support with the online problems young people might face, such as cyberbullying and hacking.

On the homepage of this website you'll see a scared character, which is an easy-to-access link to CEOP for our pupils. At Kilburn Grange School we teach children that if they are worried about online safety, they can click on the scared figurine and the link will take them straight to CEOP for support.

Monitoring & Filtering

We utilise several important technological layers working in combination to provide robust protection:

• Boundary Protection and Content Filtering: Our internet network is protected by an industrial-grade firewall and content filtering solution. This system meets the standards set out in Keeping Children Safe in Education, acting as a digital barrier, preventing unauthorised access, managing network traffic, and blocking websites that contain harmful or inappropriate content from reaching our school devices.
• Device Protection (Anti-Virus): All school equipment has centrally managed Antivirus and Endpoint Protection suite installed. This security software constantly monitors for and immediately removes malicious threats, such as viruses or malware, ensuring the hardware and pupil data remain secure.
• Active Monitoring and Safeguarding: Beyond blocking access, we actively monitor pupil activity across the network. Alerting designated safeguarding leads to potentially harmful actions that may indicate a child is at risk or being targeted.
• Communication Platform Security (Google): Our email platform and Learning Management System (LMS) are provided by Google. This service includes powerful, built-in security protocols that filter out spam, phishing attempts, and suspicious emails before they reach inboxes, safeguarding our digital communications.
• Data Integrity and Recovery: All of our critical school data is protected by a comprehensive backup and data recovery solution. This essential system is managed by our trusted IT support partner, TechResponse, ensuring that all information is regularly saved and can be quickly and securely restored in the event of hardware failure or accidental data loss.

The National College

The National College provides multi-award winning online safety education for the whole school community. They believe that when children go online to learn, to communicate or to play, they should be able to do so safely. 

We are delighted to offer National Online Safety courses for free to all our families. The courses are up-to-date and relevant for all our young people, and for their families, as we work to keep them safe online. 

Parents can join National College for free to help children to use the internet safely. You can register and create your account. When you’re set up, you’ll be able to set ‘Parent/Carer’ as your user type.