New Range of 360 Online Safety Self-Review Tools is Launched

Many schools across the UK use the 360safe self-review tool to review and improve their online safety provision. Other organisations that work with children and young people have used the similar Online Compass tool to fulfil their online safety requirements.

Now there are new tools on the block that are here to stay! As technology and online behaviours have changed, SWGfL have needed to update the tools so that they are still relevant to organisations and their community.

With support from European Commission funding, SWGfL has released new and more focussed versions of the tools for non-school settings. The tools are completely free of charge to use.

In September SWGfL launched “360 Early Years” with a clear focus on the review of policy and practice in settings for pre-school children. It has 12 areas of focus which the setting can judge itself against 4 level statements, helping them to judge if their practice reaches what will be considered as essential or effective levels.

The latest in the series is the “360 Groups” tool. It has the same features as the Early Years tool but the review and content will be focussed more towards a wide range of other groups that work with children and young people of school age. This might include breakfast clubs, holiday schemes, youth groups, faith groups, sports clubs, libraries, uniformed organisations and a whole host of other such organisations.

Both tools have a set of online safety policy templates which settings/groups can adapt to suit their particular circumstances. There are also links to relevant resources. Having completed the review of their current practice in the tool, settings/groups can produce a range of reports and set themselves an improvement plan. The tools allow them to benchmark their level against the average of all the settings/groups that use the tool across the UK.

SWGfL are pleased to provide these free to use, updated tools to help organisations keep their children and young people, staff and volunteers safe online, whilst also protecting the organisation itself in this essential area of safeguarding.

The new tools have been produced as beta versions, allowing further improvements and additions to be made over the coming months. SWGfL would encourage users to let them have their comments on the tools and any suggestions for improvement

Those settings/groups that used the Online Compass tool are encouraged to register as the Online Compass tool will be discontinued on 31st March 2021 and the data will not be migrated to the new versions.

Access 360 Early Years          Access 360 Groups