Guidance to ensure safety of learners and staff
Do:
- Agree in advance with parents/carers that any 1:1 on line activity with under 18s or vulnerable adults can take place. This must then take place only at the days / times agreed with parents.
- Ensure that parents/carers/named adult are present in house at the time of the meeting.
- Agree protocols with parents/carers about expectations for learners including appropriate location and dress etc.
- If at any time you feel uncomfortable during a 1:1 call, with something done or said, you should end the call as soon as possible and report any concerns to your line manager and/or safeguarding advisor. Examples may include: student inappropriately dressed or in an inappropriate location (e.g. bedroom).
- Ensure your safeguarding training is up to date and apply good safeguarding practice as you would in a face-to-face situation.
- Treat this as you would a face to face meeting with a student, colleague or other adult:
- Be punctual and courteous.
- Use professional and appropriate language.
- Turn your phone to silent.
- Conduct video calls to learners or colleagues from a desk or other appropriate location. If you do work from your bedroom, you MUST blur your background.
- Remind learners that all calls/videos may be recorded – this is to safeguard both parties and wouldn’t routinely be shared.
- Test your audio and/or video before a scheduled call.
- Record any live classes so that if any issues were to arise, the video can be reviewed.
- Live classes should be kept to a reasonable length of time, or the streaming may interfere with other family activity.
- Look at your screen, pay attention to others and when speaking make sure to look at your camera. If you use two monitors make sure the conference software is on the screen with the camera above it.
- Check what you can see when you first log in as this is what others will see.
- Mute your microphone when not needing to talk to avoid any background noise.
Do not:
- Conduct a video call if it would be improper for a face-to-face meeting.
- Multi-task; your audience will be aware.
- Shout; the other participants will tell you if they cannot hear.
- Click your pen, tap on your desk or anything else annoying or distracting.
- Eat or drink, other than water / tea / coffee
- Leave multiple applications open during the call as it may affect the quality. You may also end up accidentally sharing something confidential.
- Wear stripes or heavy patterns creating pixilation of images.
Useful further guidance
Coronavirus: 10 safeguarding rules for teachers at home
Undertaking remote teaching safely
You download this guidance on video conferencing as a word document.
