Going live since September have been a great mix of schools who are each harnessing Facebook for their own reasons. You’d be forgiven for thinking that to use the world’s biggest social media platform your school would have to be at the frontier for innovation or at the very least have maverick-like leadership. Not true. Far from it.
The Heads I’ve worked with all know the value of parental engagement. From new-to-the-school through to very well established Heads it really doesn’t matter and for them it’s just a matter of how to get traction.
Where a school ‘is’ in Ofsted’s eyes is proving not to be a factor in whether a Head chooses to use engage with parents or not using social media. For example you might think that a school with a notice to improve has better things to be doing? Surely it’s inviting trouble from disgruntled parents but in our experience it appears not.
Safeguarding: key features of outstanding practice
In speaking with Children Safeguarding Boards about their priorities it feels like safeguarding has begun to usurp e-safety in many people’s minds. The tide is turning on the ‘everything social is bad’ camp and that’s why we say ‘harnessing Facebook for good’. Experience shows that parents want to be active participants in safeguarding and actively be included and party to the school’s success having invested their most precious things into the school – their children. This video (made by year 3) was a direct result of children and parents being together in a joint ‘talk’ about how to keep safe.
(Firefox may not show the video below – switch to any other browser to view)
From the Ofsted Safeguarding in schools – report summary:
“Ofsted does not require schools to build walls around play areas; it does not expect schools to seek Criminal Records Bureau checks on casual visitors to schools, including parents; it does not judge a school to be inadequate because of minor administrative errors, or because an inspector’s ID was not checked.”
“a curriculum that is flexible, relevant and engages pupils’ interest; that is used to promote safeguarding, not least through teaching pupils how to stay safe, how to protect themselves from harm and how to take responsibility for their own and others’ safety”
Keeping children safe is everyone’s job and we believe that for children to be safer social citizens they need better equipped parents who can actively & passively learn via school as an excellent role model.