How Fetching helps you adhere to KCSIE

In today's educational landscape, primary schools are tasked with the huge responsibility or nurturing young minds while simultaneously navigating a complex web of statutory guidance and safeguarding duties.

The cornerstone of this effort, "Keeping Children Safe in Education" (KCSIE), is a vital document, yet its sheer volume and detail can feel overwhelming for busy school staff striving to implement its principles into everyday practice.

We have developed Fetching to directly support child safety - here are the key ways Fetching directly supports KCSIE.

1. Improving School Attendance

The guidance highlights that persistent absence can be a vital warning sign of safeguarding issues, including neglect and exploitation. Schools must work to improve attendance and identify the reasons behind absence.

How Fetching Helps:

Building Parental Support Networks: By facilitating trusted, ID-verified networks for school runs, Fetching directly tackles a common barrier to attendance: transport logistics. Parents who may struggle due to work commitments, illness, or lack of transport can securely arrange help from other verified parents.

2. Safeguarding Collection Time

The guidance mandates that schools must provide a safe environment. An insecure collection process is a significant vulnerability.

How Fetching Helps:

ID-Verified Collectors: Fetching's core function ensures that anyone collecting a child is pre-authorised and their identity is verified by the school/parents beforehand. This moves beyond a system that relies on staff memory or easily forged notes.

"It could happen here" Attitude: This proactive verification embodies the "it could happen here" mindset by actively closing a potential security gap.

Deterring Unauthorised Access: The knowledge that the school uses a rigorous, technology-backed verification system acts as a deterrent to individuals with malicious intent.

3. Securing Communications and Protecting Data

Schools must comply with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR, processing personal information fairly, lawfully, and securely.

How Fetching Helps:

Fetching removes insecure channels by providing a dedicated, secure platform for arranging collections. Fetching eliminates the need for parents and teachers to share child collection details via unsecured methods like telephone, WhatsApp, or email.

The app provides a clear, auditable, and secure system for sharing this necessary information, ensuring the school meets its data protection obligations while fulfilling its safeguarding duty.

4. Ensuring the Right Child is Collected by the Right Person

This is a fundamental duty of care. A failure here could constitute a significant safeguarding failure and a breach of the school's duty to provide a safe environment.

How Fetching Helps:

The system provides a clear, real-time list of authorised collectors for each child, significantly reducing the risk of a child being handed over to the wrong person due to miscommunication, forgotten notes, or staff error.

Implementing a robust system like Fetching demonstrates the school's commitment to a "whole school approach to safeguarding", where child safety is embedded in every process, including end-of-day routines.