Browne Jacobson and Social Media Check urge DfE to reconsider KCSiE guidance change

New “watered down” draft guidance on how schools conduct online searches when recruiting staff could risk missing safeguarding concerns, believes a Browne Jacobson education lawyer.

Dai Durbridge, Head of Safeguarding at the UK and Ireland law firm, has called on the Department for Education (DfE) to revisit a suggested amendment to the Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE) statutory safeguarding framework, which applies to schools in England.

In a section on safer recruitment within the draft KCSiE update – which is under consultation until 22 April – paragraph 292 reads: “…As part of the shortlisting process, schools and colleges should consider carrying out a search (via an online search engine) as part of their due diligence on the shortlisted candidates.”

Under the existing guidance, schools are under a duty to consider carrying out this check via an “online search”. Many schools and trusts use dedicated platforms to conduct thorough searches of an individual’s publicly available online activity, which provides a far wider and more thorough review of content.

Between 1 February 2024 and 17 February 2026, online search provider Social Media Check produced more than 29,000 reports for schools and trusts that reviewed social media use by prospective staff.

These searches found more than 1,300 examples of hate speech and 35 examples of extremist views, while over half the searches contained evidence of swearing and profanity.

Dai said: “When the Department for Education first proposed adding social media searches to the KCSiE guidance in May 2022, it stated in a response to the consultation that there was an ‘increasing prevalence of online issues in Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) prohibition cases’. At the time, I reviewed the last 80 TRA cases up to September 2022, 15 of which involved ‘online issues’. Every one of those 15 issues related to social media and messaging apps, and the issue has not gone away.

“In our view, by suggesting explicitly that schools and trusts should only look at a search engine, this new draft guidance moves further away from what schools really ought to be doing when recruiting new staff, and are often doing very well right now, in order to safeguard pupils and protect their reputations.

“Simply typing a candidate’s name into Google provides no meaningful safeguarding action, as any search will return hundreds of thousands of hits with no clarity on whether those hits relate to the individual in question. Many of the misconduct cases with online issues involve posts and comments on X, Facebook and Instagram, but a check via an online search engine is highly unlikely to flag those issues, which can only really be found using a review of the platform itself.

“Schools and trusts are telling us that far right and misogynistic views expressed are among the biggest emerging safeguarding issues. Recruiting people who may be expressing these sentiments online – at a time when digital-savvy children have never been more adept at finding posts from their teachers – would only compound this challenge.

“We would therefore have expected the DfE to bolster wording around conducting online searches, rather than water it down, and we hope it will revisit this as part of the ongoing consultation.”

Recent TRA cases relating to online misuse include teachers:

• Downloading and sharing indecent images of young children, and engaging in inappropriate discussions about sexual activity with children on Instagram and X.
• Sharing images of violence and writing derogatory comments about Muslims on X.
• Disclosing Class A drug use on Snapchat in posts viewed by students.
• Making numerous inappropriate posts – ranging from references to pornography and paedophilia to quips about terrorist attacks – on X.

Nic Whelan, Director at Social Media Check, said: “From working with thousands of schools, it’s clear that online misuse among teachers and staff is a very prevalent issue that could set a poor example for children at a time when they are already being exposed to dangerous online personalities like Andrew Tate.

“This was an issue the DfE identified in 2022, when its KCSiE guidance explicitly mentioned the use of social media by teachers, so it feels counter-productive to be rowing back from this position now at a time when firm leadership is required.

“While many of the issues flagged in our reports are historic posts where individuals have perhaps displayed naivety and shouldn’t necessarily stand in the way of getting a job, a significant minority have picked up very concerning behaviour that has no place in a role where children are involved.

“For example, our searches have uncovered an applicant who produced hundreds of extreme pornographic images online, another posted racist remarks on more than 100 occasions while one person expressed extreme views around sexual assault. Without due diligence, each of these individuals could have been teaching the next generation.”