NEOby Nudge Education

Nudge Education Policy Library

NEO — Remote Learning Policy

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Date14 October 2026
Review DateDecember 2026, then annually, or sooner if practice or legislation changes
OwnerDirector, Nudge Education Online & Head of School, with the Designated Safeguarding Lead
Approved byApproved by the Director, NEO & Head of School on 14 October 2026 under authority delegated by the Proprietor (CEO of Nudge Education Ltd) on 13 October 2026; for noting at the NEO board on 3 December 2026
Versionv10.26

A fully online alternative provision for learners aged 11–18

1. Purpose

Every NEO lesson is remote. This policy therefore does what a contingency “remote learning” policy does in a school, and more: it defines what full-time education means at NEO, what every learner needs in order to take part safely, which devices are managed and filtered and which are not, and the standards every live session meets. It is the document the DfE’s online education standards 1.3 (full-time supervised education), 4.8 (risk assessment) and 4.9 (online safety, filtering and monitoring) point to, and it records plainly the one gap NEO has decided to carry knowingly.

NEO is a fully online alternative provision for learners aged 11–18, operated by Nudge Education Ltd (Company Number 10192753), pursuing accreditation under the DfE Online Education Accreditation Scheme (OEAS). NEO is not a DfE-registered independent school and is not subject to ISI inspection.

2. What “full-time” means at NEO

A full-time NEO place is a live timetable Monday to Thursday with assembly or mentor group at 09:30, live 45-minute lessons from 10:00, and the Practitioner-Mentor check-in at 13:00 followed by self-paced work in Google Classroom, plus Friday Cornerstones Day: 12 hours a week of live provision Monday to Thursday, 15 with Cornerstones Day. English, Maths and Science are live for every full-time learner; Art and further subjects join as Qualified Educators are signed off. Days are deliberately short, and “full-time” is always described in hours, never by comparison with a school day, because the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 full-time test attaches to the institution and NEO does not design provision around a threshold.

Part-time subject packages, one-to-one tuition, Curriculum Access and the Discovery Phase are not full-time education and are described as such to families and commissioners. Learners on those routes who are of compulsory school age must be on roll elsewhere or have their education otherwise secured by the local authority or family; NEO checks this at admission and records it on the admission register.

3. What every learner needs

Before a first lesson the Practitioner-Mentor confirms with the family, under the home learning environment screen in the Risk Assessment Policy NEO addendum: a quiet-enough place to work that is not a thoroughfare; an adult at home who can be reached during lessons; reliable broadband; a working surface and seat; and a device. Where any of these is missing NEO works with the family and the commissioner on adjustments (a privacy backdrop, a quieter time, a community study venue, a loan device) before the learner starts, not after. The screen is a support, not a gate; safeguarding concerns arising from it go to the DSL.

4. Devices, filtering and monitoring — and the gap

Every full-time learner is issued a NEO-managed Chromebook. Managed devices are enrolled in NEO’s Google Admin console (with a Chrome Enterprise Upgrade licence per device) and carry Smoothwall Cloud Filter, so that filtering reaches the device wherever it is used; the browser is locked down (no incognito or guest mode, no additional profiles, no developer tools, sign-in restricted to NEO accounts). Smoothwall Monitor will be added to managed learner devices once the supplier’s data processing agreement is countersigned and the DPIA entry is complete, so that safeguarding alerts reach the DSL from the device wherever it is. NEO devices remain NEO property, are returned at the end of the placement, and are covered by the device terms in the NEO — Home-School Agreement.

Learners on the Discovery Phase, part-time packages and tuition use their own devices by default. On a learner’s own device, NEO’s filtering applies only inside the Chrome profile signed into the NEO account, and NEO’s monitoring does not apply at all. Filtering is installed by policy on every NEO learner account, so it is active whenever the learner signs into Chrome with that account, but other browsers, other profiles and the rest of the device are untouched. Those learners are otherwise protected at account and session level: a NEO-managed learner account with a locked-down organisational unit (no external email, restricted Drive sharing, Meet joined only through the NEO account), educator-controlled Meet sessions with manual admission, no private messaging and a second adult in every session, and the online safety education in the RSHE and Cornerstones curriculum. NEO states this gap plainly to families, commissioners and the NEO board, and the board has accepted it knowingly with this policy as the mitigation. Where a commissioner or family wants a Discovery or part-time learner to have full filtering and monitoring, NEO issues a managed loan device on the terms in the Home-School Agreement. The gap and its mitigations are reviewed at every half-termly board and in the annual filtering and monitoring review under the NEO — Online Safety and Acceptable Use Policy.

Smoothwall Monitor, when deployed, runs only on NEO-managed learner devices, never on staff accounts or family devices; captured data is held by the supplier for 15 months and then deleted. Smoothwall’s processing (directory data, filtering logs and, later, monitoring captures) is recorded in the NEO platform DPIA; the supplier’s data processing agreement is awaited at the date of this policy — see the Online Safety and Acceptable Use Policy, section 7.

5. Standards for every live session

Every live session at NEO has: a Qualified Educator or Practitioner-Mentor as host and a second adult as co-host; Meet settings per the NEO checklist (manual admission, host-controlled screen share, chat moderated, no private messaging between learners, host ends the meeting for all); a breakout room available for a learner who needs to step out with their mentor; and attendance taken under the NEO — Attendance and Admission Register Policy. Live lessons are not recorded; recording is switched off across NEO and learners cannot record. Some lessons are transcribed by the Google Workspace note-taking tool, switched on only by the host, for safeguarding and lesson reporting, as set out in the NEO — Privacy Notice for Learners.

Cameras: at the start of a session a learner is asked to be seen for a moment so staff know they are present and well; after that the camera may go off, and cameras-off is never by itself a reason to mark absence. Staff cameras are on throughout. Dress and background, for staff and learners, are handled case by case and written down in the learner’s support plan or staff guidance rather than by a blanket rule; the expectation is the same as in any classroom, that nothing is on screen that would be inappropriate in front of a child.

Staff working from home follow the Practitioner Lone Working Policy; staff devices reaching the NEO tenant are in scope of the Cyber Essentials controls (MFA, patching, screen lock, no shared accounts).

6. If the platform fails

If Google Workspace or a learner’s connection fails during a session, the host tells the Engagement and Operations Co-ordinator, the Practitioner-Mentor contacts the family by phone, and the session is rescheduled or replaced with the asynchronous pack in Google Classroom; a missed session caused by NEO is not recorded as absence and is not charged. A platform outage of more than one day triggers the business continuity arrangements and a message to every family and commissioner.

7. Roles

RoleResponsibility
Director, NEO & Head of SchoolOwns this policy; defines the timetable; reports the device-coverage position to the board.
Designated Safeguarding LeadOwns the filtering and monitoring review with the named SLT lead; receives Smoothwall alerts and makes the safeguarding judgement on each (first-line follow-up by the Engagement and Operations Coordinator); decides on loan devices on safeguarding grounds.
CTO / technical leadDevice enrolment, Google Admin and Smoothwall configuration; Meet settings; platform continuity.
Qualified Educators and Practitioner-MentorsRun sessions to the standards in section 5; raise concerns the same day.
Parents and carersProvide the home conditions in section 3; keep NEO devices for NEO use; tell NEO when circumstances change.
CommissionersDecide, with NEO, whether a Discovery or part-time learner needs a managed device.

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