Recruitment in the education sector has not changed significantly for some time. This was, until Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 was introduced as part of the recruitment shortlisting process. Within this, it is recommended that schools and colleges should consider carrying out online searches as part of their due diligence on shortlisted candidates during the hiring process. Doing this may help identify any incidents or issues that have occurred, the details of which are publicly available online, and which the school or college might want to explore with the applicant at interview stage.
Undoubtedly, there has been some very mixed guidance on what this change means for schools and colleges, with some providers recommending it should also include social media searches. However, Keeping Children Safe in Education is very clear that online searches should be conducted on what is ‘publicly available’ using the usual search engines and websites. This means that any hiring panel should therefore not ask applicants for their social media handles.
Before you all groan at the enormity of the task ahead - especially if the applicant has a common name – we’re here to let you know of a couple of simple ways in which you can reduce the number of returns in your search.
By using your preferred website or search engine, you should enter the name of your applicant and then add the town or city they live in (or, if you have the information, anywhere they have lived in the past). To narrow results further, you can follow this with some key words such as: conviction, Crown Court, magistrates’ court. If the shortlisted applicant has resided abroad, do the same but add the country in which they lived or worked. Going through these quick steps should drastically narrow the pool of search results significantly, saving you time and resource.
Ideally, the person carrying out the online search on the shortlisted candidates should not be on the interview panel. However, it should be agreed what information should be provided to who, and in what format prior to any interviews. It should also be taken into consideration that any information recorded by the school or college regarding online searches will be subject to data protection legislation and would be disclosable under a Subject Access Request. For this reason, it is important to remember that the information recorded needs to be fair and factual, and that it does not introduce personal bias.
It’s important that we understand and remember the reason why online searches have been introduced. As with everything in Safer Recruitment, we’re trying to gather the most useful information to help aid our recruitment decisions. In doing so we need to be open and transparent, giving the applicant as much information as possible about what will be asked for. This will allow them a fair opportunity to knowledgably declare information at the earliest stage. We are the human firewall that stands between a perpetrator and the children in our care.
By including the online searches check in our safer recruitment policies and carrying out the requirement in a methodical and fair manner, we can hopefully deter unsuitable individuals from applying for posts in the education sector, as they will see the robust culture embedded. This applies not only from the recruitment aspect, but once we have made the recruitment decision from the ongoing culture of vigilance which links to our low-level concerns policy. When embedded effectively, not only do the children feel safe in our settings, but our staff feel confident in raising concerns as they know they will be taken seriously and acted upon.
Interested in more safer recruitment content? Read our Education Insights article!