Unit 7: Wellbeing, Safeguarding & Screen-Time

Digital tools amplify everything — including pastoral risks. This unit gives you a weekly pupil check-in template, a clear safeguarding escalation path, and screen-time guardrails that protect pupils and you. The technology should never come before the child.

⏱ 50 minutes 📊 Beginner 🎯 4 learning objectives

Learning objectives

Run a 5-minute weekly wellbeing check-in for the whole class.
Recognise three categories of safeguarding flag and the escalation path for each.
Set screen-time guardrails for pupils — and yourself.
Protect your own wellbeing as a digitally-connected teacher.

Why this unit comes last (and matters most)

You have spent six units learning to track, message, mark, and escalate. None of that matters if a pupil is in crisis and nobody noticed. The tools we have used — Google Forms, WhatsApp, Classroom — also give you something the paper register never could: early warning signals. Used well, they help you spot a struggling pupil three weeks before it would have shown up in their grades.

The 5-minute weekly wellbeing check-in

Every Monday morning, use a Google Form with three questions. Pupils fill it in on the way into class (or on a shared tablet if devices are scarce).

How are you feeling this week? 😀 Good · 🙂 OK · 😐 Meh · 😟 Not great · 😢 Bad
Did anything happen at home or school you want me to know? (Optional text — leave blank if nothing.)
Is there anyone in the class you'd like to sit with today? (Optional — helps spot isolation.)

Open the Form's response sheet during your free period. Anyone who picked 😟 or 😢 — or wrote anything in question 2 — gets a 2-minute private chat by Tuesday lunch. That single habit catches more pastoral issues than any other tool in this course.

Three categories of safeguarding flag

Not every concern is a safeguarding issue, but every safeguarding issue starts as a concern. Categorise it the moment you spot it:

🟡 Pastoral concern — pupil seems withdrawn, missing books, falling asleep in class, friendship problems. Action: log in your behaviour tracker (Unit 3), short chat with pupil, monitor for two weeks.
🟠 Welfare concern — repeated absence, visible tiredness, no lunch for several days, sudden drop in attendance or grades, family hardship mentioned. Action: log it, inform Head of Year same day, agree a check-in plan.
🔴 Child protection concern — any disclosure of abuse, neglect, self-harm, online grooming, or significant unexplained injury. Action: Do not investigate. Do not promise confidentiality. Write down exactly what was said in pupil's own words, report to the Designated Safeguarding Lead the same day, in person. Keep the written record.

The "Same Day, In Person, In Writing" rule

For any 🔴 red-flag concern:

Same day — never wait until the next morning. Find the DSL before you go home.
In person — speak to them face-to-face. WhatsApp and email are not safe channels for child protection disclosures.
In writing — afterwards, send a follow-up email summarising what you reported. This creates a record that protects the pupil, the school, and you.

If your DSL is unavailable, escalate to the head teacher. If neither is available and there's immediate danger, contact the Nigeria Police on 112 or the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) helpline on 627.

Screen-time guardrails

For pupils (school day):

Max 30 minutes continuous screen time, then 5-minute eyes-off-screen break.
No phones during break and lunch — devices stay in bags or a class basket.
One designated "tech-free" lesson per day (usually first lesson and PE).
For boarding/after-school: devices off 30 minutes before lights-out.

For you (the teacher):

WhatsApp Business: school hours only (Unit 5).
Google Classroom notifications: weekdays 7 am – 5 pm only. (Settings → Notifications → Schedule.)
One full day a week with no school apps open. Pick the day and protect it.
If you find yourself marking after 8 pm three nights in a row — your system is broken, not you. Revisit Units 5 and 6.

👀 Watch it work — Mrs Adeyemi spots a 🟠

Monday morning check-in. Ada, normally a 😀 pupil, ticks 😟 and writes "my dad lost his job last week."

Tuesday lunch, Mrs Adeyemi pulls Ada aside for 2 minutes. Ada confirms the family is cutting meals to one a day. No abuse, no neglect — but real hardship. This is a 🟠 welfare concern.

Same afternoon, Mrs Adeyemi reports verbally to the Head of Year.
Logs the concern in the school's pastoral tracker with date and Ada's own words.
Head of Year quietly arranges a hot lunch through the school welfare fund.
Mrs Adeyemi checks in every Monday for the next four weeks.

Three weeks later Ada's check-in is back to 🙂. None of her classmates ever knew.

✍ Exercise 7.1 — Build your weekly check-in

Before the end of this unit:

Create a Google Form with the three check-in questions above. Title it "Monday check-in — [Your class]".
Make it accept multiple submissions per email (or anonymous if your pupils don't have email).
Print the QR code and stick it inside your class door.
Write down (on paper, for now): your school's Designated Safeguarding Lead's name, room number, and phone extension. Memorise this.
Block 30 minutes on Tuesday lunchtimes in your planner — every week — for follow-up chats.

A note on you

Teachers who use digital tools well are 40% more productive — and 60% more likely to burn out if they don't set boundaries. The tools in this course only work if you do. School-hours-only messages, one tech-free day, and a clear "I'll respond on Monday" auto-reply on weekends are not luxuries. They are the difference between a five-year teaching career and a thirty-year one. Look after yourself first; the pupils need you here next term.

Unit summary

Run the 5-minute Monday check-in. It catches more than any other tool.
Three flag categories: 🟡 pastoral, 🟠 welfare, 🔴 child protection. Different escalation for each.
Red-flag rule: Same Day, In Person, In Writing. Never investigate. Never promise silence.
Screen-time guardrails apply to pupils and teachers. Boundaries are the system.

Wellbeing, Safeguarding & Screen-Time