Safe School Marketing: Understanding the Safeguarding Risks

Safe school marketing is all about sharing positive news about your school with the public while understanding the safeguarding risks. As a public-facing endeavour, there’s a number of challenges any school marketer has to seriously contend with.

We’ve been working closely with schools and Trusts across the UK for years to generate successful marketing strategies that effectively safeguard staff and students alike. In this blog, we outline the most common safeguarding risks you need to be aware of and, importantly, how to handle them.

Be Careful with Photography

Getting positive images of your school out to your local community is a key part of safe school marketing. However, when sharing any images, there are a number of safeguarding issues to be aware of.

Firstly, make sure that you have parental permission to use the image of any child in a photo you share publicly. Keep a regularly updated record, and delete any photography that you don’t have permission to use.

Once this is ensured, consider how each image represents everyone depicted. While it can be difficult to judge, try to avoid using photos which other children might make fun of, or if there would be any bullying as a consequence.

Another factor to consider is where you store photographs taken of young people and staff at your school. Make sure that you protect the file location of the photography, and make sure that you know who has access. At Eduprise, we manage each client’s photography, working with our clients to make sure we choose the right images that show the school in its best light, but don’t put anyone at risk.

Get the Language Right

Whatever you are writing about, you are responsible for making sure that the language you use doesn’t endanger anyone, or put anyone at risk of being negatively affected.

While practicing safe school marketing, your first priority is to avoid sharing identifiable information that could put pupils or staff in physical danger.

But it is equally important that you avoid using language that offends or makes anyone feel vulnerable. Think about whether the terms you are using might be seen as derogatory or disempowering.

Control Your Social Media Accounts

If your content is successful, it’s likely that your posts will receive likes, shares, and positive conversation and support in the comments. Unfortunately, however, not everyone is as committed to creating a positive atmosphere on social media as you are.

Safe school marketing is about taking the proper precautions. You could be at risk of receiving comments or posts on your social media pages that harm your young readers.

Each social media channel has tools to filter out potentially harmful language, block abusive accounts, and limit access to who can view what on your page.

Another risk you might not have considered lies with hashtags. Abbreviations for certain material you wouldn’t want your school associated with might surprise you, so it’s important to check each hashtag in advance to make sure your school posts don’t end up in a feed you wouldn’t want children visiting.

Start Safe School Marketing

At Eduprise, we manage all our clients’ social media channels to make sure we pick up anything damaging that might slip through the net. In addition, we manage access for over 100 social media accounts, keeping record of every individual that has access.

If you’re looking to expand your safe school marketing capacity, and want consistent peace of mind and security when it comes to managing safeguarding risks, talk to us today.