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Benchmark.Pulse

Data protection pack

Safeguarding protocol for designated safeguarding leads

For the DSL and deputy DSLs at a school using Benchmark.Pulse. Read before any survey opens. Adapt it to your safeguarding and child protection policy, and keep it with your other safeguarding procedures.

Version: draft v1.3, 12 October 2026

What the product does

  1. Every written comment is checked as it arrives, in pupil, parent and staff surveys, against a broad list of words and phrases that may indicate harm (for example hurt, hit, scared, self-harm, unalive, abuse, knife, touched). Comments that contain Arabic script (including Urdu), Bengali, Gurmukhi (Punjabi), Devanagari, Gujarati, Tamil or Cyrillic characters are always flagged, because the check cannot read them. Comments in other scripts, such as Chinese, Greek or Amharic, are not checked at all and are not flagged.
  2. A flagged comment goes to safeguarding leads only. You see the original text, as it was written. It is not shown to anyone else on the school's team, it is kept out of the report, the AI commentary and the results download, and the report says only that some comments were passed straight to the safeguarding lead.
  3. Safeguarding leads are emailed within about 5 minutes. The email never contains the comment: it links to the app, where you sign in to read it.
  4. If an alert is not reviewed within 2 hours, safeguarding leads are reminded and the account owner is told that an alert is waiting (never what it says).
  5. If an alert email has not gone out after 15 minutes, everyone on the team sees a warning in the app. Treat that as a fault and tell Benchmark.Pulse support.
  6. When you review an alert you record what was done: no concern, logged in your safeguarding system, action taken in school, or referred.
  7. The comment text is deleted 30 days after review. Record anything you need in your own safeguarding system (for example CPOMS or MyConcern) before then.

What it does not do

  • It cannot tell you who wrote a comment. Responses carry no name, email, account, device or time. Benchmark.Pulse cannot identify the writer either, and will not try. The alert does show when the comment arrived. Do not use that to work out who wrote it.
  • It will miss some concerns. The check is word-based. Indirect language, sarcasm, unusual spellings and Latin-script languages other than English may not be caught. That includes Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian and Somali, in which some parent surveys are offered. It is a safety net, not a disclosure route.
  • It is not monitored out of hours. Alerts can arrive in the evening, at weekends and in holidays.

Before a survey opens

  • Make sure at least two people are named as safeguarding leads on the Team page (the DSL and a deputy). A survey cannot open without at least one.
  • Agree who checks alerts during the survey window, including evenings and weekends if pupils can respond from home, and any holiday cover.
  • Make sure the intro and the class script have been read to pupils. They tell pupils that you will not know who wrote a comment and that they should tell an adult if they need help.
  • For pupil surveys run in class, brief staff to follow the usual safeguarding procedure if a pupil becomes upset or tells them something during the session.

When an alert arrives

  1. Read it promptly, and in any case within the school day.
  2. Decide whether it indicates risk to a child or adult, using your usual threshold judgements.
  3. Remember you cannot identify the writer, but you can act on the information:
    • consider whole-group responses, for example a reminder to the year group or class about who to talk to and how to get help (the survey's year group breakdown is not shown for flagged comments, and you should not try to work it out);
    • check whether the comment matches a known concern already on your system;
    • if the comment describes a risk to a named or identifiable child, treat it as you would any third-party information;
    • if there is an immediate risk to life, contact the police.
  4. Allegations about adults. In a staff survey, a comment about the conduct of someone who works with children reaches you only if it contains a word or phrase on the list. Follow your procedure for allegations against staff and low-level concerns: inform the headteacher (or the chair of governors if it concerns the headteacher) and consider contacting the LADO.
  5. Record what you did in your safeguarding system and select the outcome in the app.

Do not

  • Do not try to identify the writer by comparing dates, the time an alert arrived, groups or writing style. The survey promised anonymity, and pupils and staff were told you would not know who wrote it.
  • Do not share the comment beyond those who need to know under your safeguarding policy.
  • Do not rely on the survey to find out about harm. It does not replace your usual routes for pupils and staff to report concerns.

If something goes wrong

Report it to Benchmark.Pulse support at once if:

  • an alert email did not arrive, or the app shows the "not sent" warning;
  • someone who is not a safeguarding lead saw a flagged comment;
  • a comment that clearly indicated harm was not flagged.

Benchmark.Pulse will investigate, tell you what happened and what it changed, and treat any exposure of a comment to the wrong person as a personal data breach under the data processing agreement.