This repository has policies which can be adopted by schools. All policies are published under a MIT license which means a school can take them, doctor them as needed and store them for their own use.
The aim of this repository is to provide schools with a base set of policies which outline good practice.
We welcome contributions from members of the public on our policies in two ways.
- Create an Issue: These are primarily for paragraph additions or removals from the document, thoughts and questions. All submissions via this method must have a rationale behind them as to why you recommend this change. All issues are then public and can be commented on by anybody.
- Create a Pull Request: For those who want to go ahead and edit the document directly because of grammatical errors or to re-word parts, this is the best option for you.
You will find the Social Media Policy here: https://github.com/onShowcase/EducationPolicies/blob/develop/socialmedia.md
All of our policies are free to use, with no strings attached.
It is inevitable that all these policies will need to evolve over time, to account for changes in regulations, best practice and technology changes. To keep our policies up to date, we will release 3 kinds of updates:
Major updates to content will include 'breaking changes' which means that other parts of the document will also need changing to comply with the new content. In this case, parts of the original policy are 'broken' hence the name 'breaking changes'.
Minor changes will not affect any of the existing policy document. Minor changes are usually an addition to the document; a new section or feature.
Patches are the smallest type of change. Patches will not change the meaning of any of the content within the policy document but sections may be altered to be expressed differently. Typically, this could be spelling or grammar corrections.
When you update your school's policy documents will depend upon how your school chooses to manage its policies.
Our recommended approach is to update your policies with major updates at the beginning of each school year, and add the minor updates once each term. This will enable your school to stay up to date with the latest policies with very little overhead.
Sure, not a problem. Remember though, that once you have copied and pasted the document it is no longer a live version and will still need updating in accordance with new changes and updates.
Again this is not a problem. There is some extra overhead to this as keeping it up to date won't be as easy as just using it as you will need to scan your own version to see which sections apply, however, the whole purpose of making this open source is so everyone can use it in whichever way they please.
Nothing is perfect and there is always room for iteration. If you see something that needs adjusting please feel free to contribute to the document yourself by clicking on the Fork button when in the document. You will then be able to access the document from your own Github account, make the necessary changes and send them back to us (via a Pull Request).
In short, no. You are free to take a copy of the policy yourself and make the changes you wish. However, changes to the main document will only happen if we think it is in the best interest of everyone using the polices.
Our aim is to create a baseline policy that gives the most flexibility to to schools, whilst keeping students and teachers safe. We leave scope for schools to doctor the policy and 'lock down' aspects of it if they feel aspects are too liberal for them.