Managing student image and video content
Guidance to support school pupil/student image security
Appropriately managing images and videos on a school website is essential to maintain a professional and secure online presence whilst mitigating opportunities for misuse. Ensuring that media is carefully selected, appropriately captioned and compliant with local policies helps to protect pupils, students and staff against unauthorised sharing or manipulation.
Clear expectations, consent procedures and thoughtful content curation are vital in promoting your organisation’s values, celebrating success and engendering trust within the community. By managing content responsibly, schools, colleges and other organisations can effectively showcase achievements whilst mitigating potential risks.
Developed by the Professionals Online Safety Helpline (POSH) and colleagues from the UKCIS Early Warning Working Group, the guidance below is intended to reflect best practice when considering how to manage image and video content on your organisation’s online platforms such as the school/college website and/or social media presence.
Guidance for schools and colleges
Evidence (1) tells us that Schools and Colleges are typically strong in their approach to managing images and videos. However, whilst new and emerging technologies bring a wealth of benefits for education, the potential misuse of these means it is clear that we must remain vigilant to a range of threats.
Any image or video content shared on a social media platform set to public can be accessed by anyone. Schools should exercise great caution sharing images or videos of learners publicly on social media platforms due to the potential risk of the content being misused. Social media platforms can be vulnerable to web scraping which facilitates public content to be collected at scale. Loss of control of images, for example, can expose learners to potential data and privacy risks. HwB: Practices and principles for schools’ use of social media
To support colleagues with their approach, the following guidance has been developed to provide some useful considerations that will help to mitigate potential risks and support best practice. Whilst some actions such as website changes will understandably require the support of technical expertise, there are also a number of practical actions that can be taken.
Practical actions to take
Regularly Review Online Content
Conduct periodic audits of your school’s website and social media platforms to assess the necessity of images featuring students. Where possible, replace identifiable student images with generic school-related visuals.
Apply a ‘Names-No-Images / Images-No-Names’ Policy
Consider how your school manages images of students and avoid publishing identifiable information/images in publicly accessible materials. For example, by limiting to a first-name only approach, this reduces the likelihood of images being misused or linked to individuals.
Limit Public Visibility of Student Images
Where images of students are necessary, consider placing them behind a secure, password-protected area, such as a parents’ portal.
Ensure Image Metadata is Removed
Before uploading images, ensure that location data and other metadata (such as EXIF information) have been removed to prevent unintended exposure – see Guide to Removing EXIF metadata below
Use Lower Resolution Images
Where images are used, consider reducing their resolution to limit the ability for them to be repurposed.
Strengthen Privacy Settings on School-Managed Platform
Review and apply strict privacy settings (2) to any school-managed social media (3) accounts to control who can access and share posted images. Ensure that approach is in line with any local authority or organisation’s social media policy.
Follow Established Image Use Policies
Ensure that all image use aligns with your organisation/local authority data protection policies and that informed consent procedures are in place and up to date. Consider how your approach emcompasses the views of C&YP.
Embed Image Security Awareness in Staff Training
Provide regular training to staff on secure image sharing, emerging risks and responsible online content management, including the process to be followed in the event of an incident.
Consider the use of staff imagery in your approach
Your approach should address how you manage content featuring staff images or videos across the school’s online presence.
Engage with Parents and Carers
Maintain open communication with families about how the school protects student images and the steps taken to address evolving digital risks. Ensure your safeguarding expectations are clear in relation to images/videos of students being posted on personal social media accounts and why this is important.
Review and ensure effective school policies and processes are in place
Online Safety is a safeguarding issue. Should an incident (4) occur, related safeguarding/child protection policies (5) and procedures should identify clear escalation routes including reporting to the Police and where applicable, the Internet Watch Foundation (6). Ensure all staff are aware of, and understand, their responsibilities.
Work with Trusted Online Safety Partners
Stay informed of best practices and emerging risks by collaborating with organisations such as the UK Safer Internet Centre, SWGfL and the Professionals Online Safety Helpline (7).
Whilst the above steps are not exhaustive, they will help to guide you in your approach. By adopting these measures, schools can continue to celebrate student achievements whilst prioritising their safety and privacy in an increasingly digital world.
Guide to removing EXIF metadata
EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) is a format used to store information (8) (metadata) about something. In relation to images, metadata includes information such as the date and time of when an image was taken, where it was taken and information about the device used.Â
When uploading such images to public platforms, it is important to ensure that this metadata is removed – whilst some platforms may automatically do this, the following steps are provided as a means to check and remove EXIF data as part of your approach to data security.
PC/Windows
1. Right-click the image file and select Properties and then the Details tab.
2. Click Remove Properties and Personal Information at the bottom of the window
3. Choose from ‘Create a copy with all possible properties removed’ or ‘Remove the following properties from this file’
4. Check the resulting file using Step 1 above to ensure the metadata has been successfully removed
MacOS
1. Open the image in Preview (double-click the image)
2. Click File > Export
3. Under Info, ensure the box ‘Include Location Information’ is NOT checked
4. Ensure the image title does not contain identifiable information
5. Click Save and then check the resulting file using Step 1 above.
Whilst these steps do not prevent someone from harvesting images on public platforms, it is a useful step in ensuring associated metadata (9) is kept to a necessary minimum.Â
(1) 360 Safe School Self-Review, Policy & Practice Assessment 2024: https://swgfl.org.uk/research/england-schools-online-safety-policy-and-practice-assessment-2024
(2) SWGfL Social Media Checklists: https://swgfl.org.uk/resources/checklists
(3) HwB: Practices and principles for schools’ use of social media: https://hwb.gov.wales/keeping-safe-online/welsh-government-guidance/practices-and-principles-for-schools-use-of-social-media
(4) UKCIS How to Respond to an Incident (Overview): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sharing-nudes-and-semi-nudes-advice-for-education-settings-working-with-children-and-young-people Â
(5) SWGfL Online Safety Policy Template: https://swgfl.org.uk/resources/online-safety-policy-templates
(6) Internet Watch Foundation: https://www.iwf.org.uk/en/uk-report/
(7) Professionals Online Safety Helpline: Online Safety support for professionals working with children and young people https://saferinternet.org.uk/professionals-online-safety-helpline
(8) Also consider whether any Alt-text (brief descriptions of an image often used to support accessibility) may contain identifiable information.
(9) Third-party tools may offer additional options to further remove EXIF data
Example Risk Management Template (adapt to meet local need)
