Online Tutoring – Safeguarding Considerations for Schools

With remote learning becoming such a common practice throughout the UK, more and more opportunities are arising with the use of video conferencing and digital communication. Although physical meet ups are still fairly uncommon right now, organisations are still actively hiring new employees for work in remote settings. Our partners at SWGfL have put together a helpful resource to outline the key things to remember when it comes to recruiting online tutors. In this blog they look at what online tutoring is as well at the key things that this resource covers.

Schools in particular are consistently in a process of taking on new members of staff to fulfill education responsibilities on a wide scale. With so many restrictions in place, tutoring is more important than ever, with a constant need to keep students and young people engaged in their education, with many now using online platforms for learning. During this time, professional tutors who are seeking to help schools can offer valuable skills to actively teach students in the common home setting.

Although many things have changed over the past few months, the need to maintain safeguarding responsibilities has maintained a high priority status – if anything, this has become even more a priority. With limitations in place, it is important to remember your safeguarding duties, not just within the school setting, but when recruiting new members of staff as well.

Always remember, online tutoring is an unsupervised activity that will occur on a daily basis. Have all the checks been made on the potential candidate? Are they DBS checked? Do they have the right qualifications?  Are they made fully aware of your school’s ethos and attitude to learning?

There are many things to consider, and being absent from a more traditional recruitment process may lead to certain things slipping by, especially when factoring in unsupervised online learning. A key thing to remember is the suitability of the candidate towards the targeted demographic of children you want to support.  Will they match the students’ needs and do their previous skills reflect that?

As the school it is also important to outline the method of how the online teaching will be implemented. Sticking to a code of practice will ensure consistency and will allow students to become familiar with a regular routine. Make sure to highlight which online platform to use and ensure that policy and codes of practice are understood correctly.  

Our partners at SWGfL has put together a resource that outlines the key things to remember if you’re a school taking on new online tutors. Included is guidance, along with a checklist of things to consider when recruiting.

Each point is there to advise on where your responsibility lies when it comes to online learning whilst consistently pointing to correct safeguarding practice. All the information is there to ensure you and your school community stay safe when online.