eSafety Label is a Europe-wide accreditation and support service for schools, aiming to provide a secure and enriching environment, for safe access to online technology as part of the teaching and learning experience.
The eSafety Label website aims to be a one-stop shop for teachers, head of schools and ICT administrators when it comes to
- evaluating their school’s online safety
- taking action to improve and reinforce it
- sharing best practices among their peers
Thanks to the eSafety Label Community, schools can review their own online safety infrastructure, policy and practices against national and international standards.
The eSafety Label Community consists of almost 4,000 teachers and contact points (Ministries of Education, universities, Safer Internet Centres, etc.) from 38 countries!
eSafety Label - how was it born?
As a continuously evolving concept, eSafety or ‘online safety’ encompasses the skills, attitudes and behaviour of users online as well as the content they access and the online context in which they work. Recognising the growing needs of schools for assistance to manage their use of technology, a number of leading technology companies and Ministries of Education have joined forces with European Schoolnet to address the gap in a truly multi-stakeholder fashion.
The eSafety Label initiative was born out of this this joint commitment in 2012.
The pilot programme
The project was officially launched on Safer Internet Day 2012 and followed by a two-year pilot programme in which schools tested the platform and the increasing number of features and language versions. The schools' feedback shaped the nature of the eSafety Label services offered to schools and, in particular, the assessment and accreditation tool.
The result of this testing period demonstrated the need for a personalised Action Plan, which schools can download after completing the Assessment Form, helping them to understand their current both their online safety status, and the key areas to be improved. The eSafety Label was shaped in such a way that it be harmonious with previously existing initiatives on both a national and regional level across Europe.
The research programme
Before starting development, extensive research was carried in different countries, including Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Estonia, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK. The countries were chosen to guarantee good representation of high to low technology schools and varying online safety legislative and pedagogical frameworks. The research included extensive desktop research and stakeholder interviews.
In February 2012, European Schoolnet published a report describing the research phase and the specific design process of the portal, which took place from June to December 2011.
The full research report can be downloaded here.
Founding stakeholders
The eSafety Label was initiated as a multi-stakeholder project. It has come about because a number of leading companies (Kaspersky Lab, Liberty Global, Microsoft and Telefonica) and European Education Ministries (Belgium-Flanders, Italy and Portugal) recognised the growing needs of schools for assistance and decided to join forces with European Schoolnet to address the gap. The consortium has been supported in its actions through Ministries of Education and educational organisations in Austria, Estonia and Spain and it is extending into more and more European countries.
Become a partner
Present and future
Building upon the expertise in the field of online safety as well as the ongoing popularity of the eSafety Label initiative, the eSafety Label + project, Become the next eSafety Champion, was funded through the Erasmus+ programme and it is aiming to
- empower eSafety Champions
- map current needs and key priorities for European schools
- share best practices among a wide community of teachers, heads of schools, ICT coordinators and the entire school ecosystem.
Find out more about the project on the dedicated area on this portal.
Visit the eSafety Champion area.