In partnership with the Foyle Foundation
At the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) we strive to foster an environment for children which is safe, child-centred, transparent, participatory, and which encourages children to understand their rights, and feel able to voice their worries or concerns. The RSC is committed to ensuring that all children who engage with the company have positive experiences underpinned by kindness, care, and respect, and free from abuse or harm.
The RSC upholds the principal in the Children’s Act (1989): that the welfare of children is paramount, and that all children have the right to protection from abuse or harm, whatever their age, culture, race or ethnicity, disability, gender, language, religious belief, or sexual identity. Our full safeguarding policy can be found here: Policies | Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Shakespeare Curriculum is a platform available to schools and educational organisations on a subscription and registration basis. The RSC delivers the Shakespeare Curriculum through a third-party technology partner, Charanga, who provide this service directly to children and young people through the Shakespeare Curriculum platform. You can find Charanga’s safeguarding and privacy policies below.
Privacy: https://charanga.com/site/policies/gdpr/privacy-notice/
Safeguarding: https://charanga.com/site/policies/gdpr/child-protection-online-safety-policy-statement/
Teachers
Teachers are the primary users of The Shakespeare Curriculum. A ‘lead’ teacher is the teacher who registers their school to access the site, agreeing to Terms of Use during the signup process. The lead teacher completing the registration can add additional teachers from the school, all of whom can add or sync their student users.
All student data is held within the platform and is uploaded by teachers of that school; no student data is shared directly with RSC staff unless it is required for technical support or through a safeguarding report that the school have a duty to share with the RSC and technology partner Charanga to action and remove data on their behalf.
The uploading of student data lies with the school, not the RSC, and can either happen manually by a registered teacher, or through an automated sync using a school’s SSO provider (either Microsoft or Google).
Site access for students and home learning
The Shakespeare Curriculum does not allow or enable student to student communication, sharing or connection. Decisions about providing access to the platform for children and young people can only be made by the school registered to use the platform. Schools can enable student access by issuing students with login details, monitoring their Home Learning activity, and deleting/removing student accounts.
Children and young people cannot access the platform without having an account created for them by their school. Accounts can only be created by a teacher or other member of staff with an active Shakespeare Curriculum login attached to a school, or organisation with an active licence.
These users can also:
- Add and remove other teachers from a specific Student Group.
- Use Home Learning to share assignments, portfolios, and creative tools directly with students.
- See all work saved and submitted as homework by a student’s account.
- Change login details to prevent access to an individual account if needed.
- Edit student’s details (names)
- Remove and add individual students to and from specific Student Groups
- Delete student accounts so they no longer have access to the platform
- Remove or reassign whole Student Groups
Students can use their Shakespeare Curriculum login to upload and save work such as images, audio, or video files. They can also use their login to access the platform from any computer or tablet in or out of school. Students and schools are responsible for the content and moderation of content that a student uploads. The RSC has no direct access to the content a student uploads. If inappropriate content is uploaded by a student, then a school will need to contact the Shakespeare Curriculum team to request specific deletion of said content.
Teachers are responsible for checking that the content their students upload to the Shakespeare Curriculum platform does not contravene copyright laws.
Students can only upload content using their own Shakespeare Curriculum login.
Students should not share their accounts with anyone else, other than a teacher or guardian or unless required to as part of a school’s policy.
Students cannot directly share uploaded content with anyone other than the teacher/s who has/have given them access to the platform.
Teachers have the ability to give both a mark, and feedback on homework submitted by a student through the platform. Some schools may choose to use their Google Classroom, Microsoft, or similar platform to provide marking and feedback. This is the only form of teacher to student messaging on the platform. There is no other messaging function on the Shakespeare Curriculum.
Data Retention
Charanga stores account history for both teachers and students for seven years (a ‘complete’ time through KS3-4 for most students). This can be retrieved upon request for safeguarding or legal purposes – for example, by a school Designated Safeguarding Lead or Local Authority Designated Officer for Allegations.
For completion of a DSAR (Digital Subject Access Request) please get in touch with the Shakespeare Curriculum team at schools.curriculum@rsc.org.uk
Additionally, teachers who need to ask for a record of a teacher/school’s message history should contact schools.curriculum@rsc.org.uk
Please refer to the RSC’s safeguarding policy Policies | Royal Shakespeare Company
For further assistance regarding our safeguarding policies, please contact shakespearecurriculum@rsc.org.uk
Unexpected direct contact from a student
The Royal Shakespeare Company does not offer any direct support to students using the Shakespeare Curriculum platform. However, we recognise that, as a company operating in the education sector and being highly visible on a day-to-day basis in classrooms and safe learning environments, it is possible – however unlikely – that a child/young person could make direct contact with us.
A student might contact the RSC seeking technical support related to the Shakespeare Curriculum, or a vulnerable student might contact RSC seeking a safe adult to ask for advice.
Members of the team who may receive unexpected direct contact from students include, but are not limited to:
- anyone who answers the help and information phone lines and emails
- anyone who manages and monitors social media
All team members are given detailed information regarding managing direct contact with a child, in accordance with the RSC’s Safeguarding policy. All contact will be logged, and action will be taken to report any communication to the school and will be subject to internal reporting
For further information or assistance regarding our safeguarding policies, please contact our Designated Safeguarding Officer for learning participation fiona.ingram@rsc.org.uk or contact safeguarding@rsc.org.uk