Why some student images have become a foreseeable risk — and what calm, child-safe leadership looks like now.
- Kirra Pendergast
- Feb 10
- 3 min read
If you work in a school as a principal, in advancement or marketing, board member, wellbeing lead, ICT manager or educator, you may already know this feeling. That quiet pause before approving a photo for social media and the moment of unease that didn’t exist five years ago. The sense that something has shifted, even if the policies haven’t yet caught up.
You’re not imagining it.
The risk environment has changed, and with the amount of coverage now appearing across Australian and international media, this risk is no longer abstract. It is foreseeable.
For many years, schools relied on parental consent and permission to publish forms as the primary legal and ethical basis for publishing student images. Prior to 2021 that approach was considered sufficient. Today, unless consent is genuinely informed, specific, and auditable, it no longer reflects how images are captured, stored, transmitted, and reused in the context of a school's social media use and across multiple EdTech systems.
