Nursery students will take photos.

[Mamabananananana]

Ive finally found a place for my DC in a nearby nursery. DC seemed to like it and the staff all engaged with him happily
BUT the manager told me that the staff have their phones on them ,and will take photos of the children for the students courses?
why do they need photos? Cant it be recording by writing their experiences?
the manager made me feel as if i was over reacting? And it was not optional if we accepted the placement?
Surely i can not allow photos of my child to be recorded?

Just for context I am a safeguarding trainer and an assessor for apprenticeships (different subject but same theory and processes used for evidence and heavily work with early years assesors ) as well as other things and if it's their personal phones ....absolutely not OK for them to take photos of the children. Apprenticeships would not be asking for personal photos of children at all. Even when we did observations over video during the lockdowns etc that recording was controlled by the assessor through specific systems and never through personal devices. The recordings etc are of the person's work behaviours they are not of specific children.

Work based devices are different , as others have said there are controls etc. It should never be on personal devices if that's the case.

That's a really important clarification because photos taken on personal phones would be a huge issue and a sign of at the least breathtakingly poor practice..... personally I would see it as a safeguarding issue.

Sorry posted too soon. I would absolutely raise to the ombudsman if they are taking photos of children on their personal phones.. its a huge no.

So our nursery took photos for the parents, uploaded onto their learning journal, but it was one work phone- is it their personal phones or does the manager mean the learning journal pics will be used for two purposes ?

Agree with PP's. Absolutely should not be taking photos on their personal phones. I work in a school and I have taken photos of activities/lessons for our year board but these must be done on my school phone, I must go through each child to ensure they have photo consent before I use it - all for safeguarding reasons. I personally would avoid the nursery with those kinds of policies and would report them.

The nursery we use has a device for the staff to use. Absolutely no personal devices. I'd consider reporting to ofsted and finding another nursery.

Please take this further. It is really not on. I'm surprised they didn't give you an opt out too. It's normalising something which shouldn't be normal.

This is interesting.
My niece worked at a nursery until last year.
Because my dn and I are friends on fb I also saw photos on the nursery group, usually a group of dc doing an activity.
The photos were not taken by my dn but I was surprised I had access to the group.
Is this normal?

No not normal. Wow. Who is posting these on Facebook? Is it in a parents group? It should be hidden.

Nursery leader for 20 years. No no no. There have been several highly publicised serious safeguarding cases where personal mobiles were used and as a result are now banned. You should object, or even complain to Ofsted.

No - and this is clearly an issue with the privacy settings of that nurseries page. I do know of nurseries that use Facebook groups for parents but they only add the parents - that said though, anyone could create a page claiming to be that child's parent. Photos of other peoples children should be kept off social media IMO, especially where a childcare setting can be identified. At my DD's school they are forever reminding parents to stop taking videos/photos with other peoples children in as they have some children who cannot be photographed/identified as being at that school for legal/safeguarding reasons - obv some parents continue to do as they please and ignore it. I realise that's a little off topic from the post was just replying to this comment x

We were asked permission for pics to be used on the nurseries social media- of course it’s open it’s used an advertising. You can opt out. I have no issue personally as it’s always kids faces sideways, heads down or back of their heads.
the issue with the OP is personal phone use imo.

A private FB group carefully monitored would be one thing. A public one with an easy and safe opt out would be ok too.
Personal devices are a definite no.