Lessons from the Internet: Why Schools Must Treat AI as a Safeguarding Priority
When the internet became available, it was treated it in the same way as a new piece of computer equipment, something for the IT team to look after. However, within a few years it had changed everything.
For schools, the internet offered new vehicles for learning, extensions to the curriculum, new ways of sharing and receiving data together with branding opportunities and vehicles for parent contact through school websites.
In terms of safeguarding, the internet introduced new modes of contacting children through gaming, social media and other platforms, which led to a rapid extension of peer contact. Contact moved from being local, those attending the same school or living in the same area, to global contact where children could connect with anyone via a computer screen, tablet or gaming device. It also greatly widened the opportunity for children to be targeted by perpetrators.
Every school had to learn one thing: this was more than an IT job. The internet touched safeguarding, teaching, data and the school's profile, all at once.
The impact of A.I.
AI now presents a similar major change but its impact is arriving faster. It is no longer simple chatbots. AI is already in the phones staff and pupils carry, in the products schools buy, and in every internet search pupils use to research homework. It is easy to think of AI as 'a technology thing' and move on, but we must avoid that mistake.
As AI is swiftly embedding into everyday life, schools must prioritise the implementation of core rules to safeguard the organisation, staff and pupils. Whilst governance and senior leadership focus on developing AI policy, data protection and privacy, staff training on AI is a priority.
As the latest version of Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) demonstrates, AI is now a key element of the safeguarding remit.
In practice we equip and rely on staff to recognise potential and actual concerns, but in order to do this fully staff must now be able to consider the safeguarding implications of the impact of AI.
All staff should undertake basic AI awareness training to enable them to fully understand what AI is and how it operates, the impact of using open and closed systems and the current and emerging dangers that AI connectivity presents.
The need to act now
AI development is rapidly evolving, so schools need to act now. They need to consider a way of approaching AI use that is consistent as it rapidly develops in order to maintain safeguarding standards.
The internet provided benefits to schools along with a source of new risks no one had ever heard of. The schools that managed well treated internet safety as everyone's role and managed it positively and purposefully. AI is that moment again, only developing faster.
SSS Learning Safeguarding Director
21 October 2026