The Safeguarding Conversation Every School Needs to Have

Always Protected: Safeguarding Beyond the Classroom in the AI Age

Here's something that gets said a lot in schools but rarely examined closely enough: safeguarding is everybody's responsibility.

What does that actually mean when a child's digital life extends far beyond the school gate? When they're spending hours on devices at home, forming relationships with AI tools, and navigating online spaces that their parents may not recognise and their teachers cannot see?

This webinar brings together practitioners and technology experts who are living this question every single day — and the conversation they have is one of the most grounded, honest discussions about digital safeguarding you'll find.

Who's in the room:

Tania Mackie and Harry Saunders join from Lightspeed Systems — the platform protecting 31 million students across 30,000 institutions worldwide — to talk about what genuine digital visibility looks like and why it matters. Alongside them are Abida Natha, Senior Director of Digital Learning and Designated Safeguarding Lead at Gems Wellington International School in Dubai, and Faiza Mubeen, Director of Inclusion and Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead at Beech Hall School Riyadh. Dr. Helen Wright chairs.

What makes the conversation so valuable is that blend: the people building the technology and the people deploying it day-to-day, thinking through the same problems from different angles but arriving, repeatedly, at the same place — the child at the centre.

Inside the full recording, the session opens by reframing the whole discussion. Lightspeed's technology doesn't work by flagging keywords — it uses contextual AI analysis, understanding that "kill" in a discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird is categorically different from "kill" in a context that should concern a safeguarding lead. From there, the panel moves through genuinely difficult terrain: the responsibility schools have when devices go home overnight, how parents from different cultural backgrounds can be brought into the safeguarding picture without it feeling invasive, how vulnerable students need proactive and relational safeguarding rather than generic approaches, and what it means to build a whole-school safeguarding culture that's ongoing rather than purely reactive. There's also a candid discussion of what the data shows about young people spending hours talking to AI tools for companionship and emotional support — and why that is, unmistakably, a safeguarding conversation.

And if you'd rather get the headlines first, we've also distilled the panel's sharpest thinking — including guidance from Lightspeed Systems — into a key takeaways resource. It covers the difference between monitoring as surveillance and visibility as an act of care, how schools are beginning to respond to AI companionship as a new safeguarding challenge, and one piece of practical advice from each panellist for reviewing your home-school safeguarding relationship.

Both the full recording and the key takeaways resource are available below, just pop in your details to access them.

Always Protected: Safeguarding Beyond the Classroom in the AI Age is part of the Outstanding Schools webinar series. Featuring Tania Mackie and Harry Saunders (Lightspeed Systems), Abeda Natha (Gems Wellington International School) and Faiza Mubeen (Beech Hall School Riyadh), hosted by Dr. Helen Wright.