Online search reports for schools and MATs
Recruiting school staff? Get an online search report (worth £25) for free!
Stop manually Googling shortlisted candidates. Request your free unique code and see how much time, risk, and effort you’ll save with our fast, automated, highly secure platform.
- 250,000+ school reports run to date
- Candidates give consent – no passwords required
- UK-based team, UK-based systems
- Covers 10 risk categories over 9 social media platforms.
“At the Link Academy Trust, we have used the services of Social Media Check for almost two years now and have found them to be super efficient with the turnaround time for checks. Reports are informative and we feel it does exactly what is required in line with KCSIE best practice.”
Sue HowardHR Operations Manager, Link Academy Trust
“First Federation Trust have been using the social media check package for the past 18 months and we are very happy with the service. It has been an invaluable tool in our recruitment process, in line with keeping children safe in education. The portal is easy to navigate, and the comprehensive reports come back very quickly. We would highly recommend Social Media Check to other schools.”
Gemma ThomasRecruitment & Training Officer, First Federation Trust
“Your reputation could be threatened or damaged, potentially taking years of time and effort to rebuilt. Undergoing a Social Media Check provides protection from reputational harm and ensures values and cultures are maintained.”
Dr Danny DoyleCEO, Cardinal Newman Trust
Manual Search
Automated search
A manual ‘online search’ creates more problems than it solves
And it depends heavily on the person doing it.
One member of staff might Google a candidate’s name. Another might check Facebook, LinkedIn, or X.
However it’s done, the staff member doing the online search may see personal information that has nothing to do with the candidate’s suitability for the role.
And once you have several candidates on a shortlist, the time involved increases quickly.
Google gives you search results. Social Media Check gives you confidence.
Social Media Check replaces the informal “Google-and-hope” approach that lots of schools still do.
Your HR or office team does not need to spend hours manually searching social-media feeds because every candidate follows the same process, every completed check produces a clear report, and your school still makes the recruitment decision.
Online searches are an important part of safer recruitment
The difficult bit is doing them well without wasting your time or leaving yourself open to risk.
KCSIE says schools and colleges “should consider carrying out an online search” as part of their due diligence on shortlisted candidates, so publicly available incidents or issues can be explored at interview.
That sounds straightforward. Until somebody actually has to do it.
Who searches? What do they look for? Which platforms do they check? How far back do they go? What gets recorded? And would the next person carrying out recruitment follow the same process?
Stop filling out spreadsheets and forms every time you want to do an online search. Get a free one-time use unique code for a Social Media Check and see how much time (and effort!) you can save.
< 1 hr
Report turnaround, not 3–5 days
10
Risk categories analysed
9
Platforms checked
“At Equals Trust we have been using Social Media Check for around a year now and it has been easy to implement. The checks are turned around quickly and efficiently and it gives us peace of mind that we are following the recommendations in KCSIE whilst reducing our risk of unconscious bias. The service we have received is great and we appreciate the certificate produced as evidence for our school SCRs. We definitely recommend social media check to other Trusts and schools.”
Tara Cook, Head of HR, Equals Trust
Safer recruitment, made safer.
Your next online search does not need to start with Google (in fact, it probably shouldn’t).
Whether you are reviewing your KCSIE process, preparing for your next recruitment campaign, or simply want a faster and more consistent way to check shortlisted candidates, Social Media Check turns an informal task into a defined process.
For
Office and Admin teams
Give whoever handles online searches a clear process they can follow every time, without adding hours of manual searching.
For
For school HR teams
Run the same structured online check across every shortlist and receive the same report format for every candidate.
For
For MAT HR teams
Give HR teams a common online-search approach instead of allowing different local processes to develop.
For
Leadership teams
Confidence that the school is meeting its commitment to its values and safeguarding culture.
Built for staff who already have enough recruitment admin
From securing two references to DBS checks to interview scheduling (and everything in-between) school recruitment is a lot of work.
And online searches should not become yet another afternoon filling out multi-page spreadsheets.
Much faster
Start the checking process in the morning and you can often have the report back before lunchtime.
More consistent
Every candidate goes through the same structured process.
Less manual searching
Your team does not have to Google candidates or spy on multiple social-media feeds.
Clearer records
Each completed check produces a consistent report and certificate.
How many checks do I need for my school?
Schools often bulk buy credits up front, and we offer pre-purchase volume discounts and the price paid is directly linked to the volume of reports purchased. Typically you would estimate the number of candidates you think you’ll be processing in a given academic year and buy that many credits in advance. They don’t expire.
Don’t forget to consider:
- Replacing teaching and non-teaching staff who are due to retire
- Filling posts created by internal promotions or transfers
- Covering maternity leave and long-term absence
- Recruiting fixed-term and temporary staff
- Adding capacity in growing schools, SEND provision, or central teams
- Long term contract or temporary cover
Every report costs £25 + VAT. This gives you one report on one candidate.
What is the approximate recruitment needs of schools?*
- A MAT of ten schools and approximately 600 staff might manage around 90 to 130 recruitment campaigns in a normal year.
- A typical primary school is replacing roughly 2-4 staff a year
- A typical secondary school is replacing roughly 9-16
These are just numbers of potential posts being filled – you may need multiple checks per recruitment.
Worth noting!
Recent NFER analysis found that roughly one in five support staff left the school system between 2023/24 and 2024/25, with exit rates at their highest level since the School Workforce Census began collecting this information.
* Estimates derived from combining DfE’s November 2025 School Workforce Census data with sector-reported attrition rates.
How it works
1Invite
You send the person being checked a secure email invitation.
9:00 am
2Consent
They provide consent through the Social Media Check platform.
9:05 am
3Check
Our secure software carries out an automated online search.
Automated
4Review
You and the person being checked receive the report and certificate.
By first break
Turn “did we check properly?” into a process you can answer confidently.
The Social Media Check process is much easier to explain to Ofsted than an informal one.
If a governor, trustee, or Inspector asked how your school carries out an online search, could you confidently say:
- When it happens?
- Who initiates it?
- How the candidate is informed?
- How the search is carried out?
- What gets recorded?
- Who reviews the result?
- What happens when something is flagged?
Your shortlist has six candidates. Do you really want to do six online searches?
One manual search may not feel like much work. But recruitment rarely stops at one candidate.
For every person shortlisted, somebody on staff has to work out whether they have found the right profiles, decide what to search, review the results, and record what happened. Then repeat the process for each shortlisted candidate.
Social Media Check’s platform lets you send multiple invitations to shortlisted candidates and allows the automated search process to do the heavy lifting.
You get the report and, if something comes up, have a conversation to explore your options. It couldn’t be easier.
What does Social Media Check actually analyse?
Social Media Check reviews popular social media platforms like Facebook and X against defined categories that may warrant further consideration.
These include extremist groups, hate speech, potential nudity, swearing and profanity, toxic language, violent images, drugs, weapons, firearms and keywords chosen by your school or trust.
These provide valuable insight into an candidate’s behaviours, beliefs, and attitudes which can play an important role in the vetting process. By ensuring that there is a good cultural fit with shared values that match the requirements of your organisation, you can avoid the risks of a bad hire and brand reputational damage.
FAQs
Every report costs £25 + VAT. This gives you one report on one candidate.
Schools often bulk buy credits up front, and we offer pre-purchase volume discounts and the price paid is directly linked to the volume of reports purchased. Typically you would estimate the number of candidates you think you’ll be processing in a given academic year and buy that many credits in advance. They don’t expire.
It’s your report, delivered to you, retained under GDPR-defined limits. If it does surface something, you get the option most candidates wish they had: a chance to clean up before anyone else looks.
Sure. The unique code is a one time use. If you don’t want to try it out on yourself, we’d recommend giving it to someone on staff or on a shortlisted candidate. The free check and report will help you understand the process and see if it is a good fit for your needs.
Yes. One credit, on us. No card details taken to run the check.
Less than 5 minutes to give consent to the various social media platforms. Then, depending on the history and depth of content and platforms our tool has to work through, you should get the report back by email within the hour. Once you’ve given consent you can leave it to do its thing.
A Social Media Check report can be configure to check “Public Only” or “Public and Private” posts. This is achievable since the report is fully consented by the candidate. The public and private post report is able to see content that wouldn’t ordinarily be seen when conducting manual social media checks.
A candidate can check up to five accounts on each Social Media platform within a single report token. For example, if a candidate had a Facebook account for their personal content plus a Facebook account for a club / organisation that they run, both of these could be declared within the consent stage and both of these accounts would be checked within the scope of a standard report.
For most candidates, our Social Media check will check the entire social network post history of that individual. The check starts at the most recent post made and works back historically over time checking every post found.
We do have a fair usage policy that it is worthy to note. This means that a standard report will check up to 18,200 posts maximum. These are sub divided as follows:
- X – Maximum of 3,200 posts
- All other Social Platforms – Maximum of 15,000 posts
Over the past 100,000 reports processed, the number of candidates who had social media content exceeding this “fair usage” policy was less than 0.238% (just 238 candidates).
Yes, the entire process complies with GDPR regulations. The individual for whom the check is required must consent to the check being conducted. Without this consent, the check cannot be undertaken.
Social Media Check will only check the channels that have been consented to by an individual.
For the standard report the content that the system then analyses includes the posts, blogs, titles, text and images within these posts.
Content that is not currently analysed includes private messages, comments made by the individual on another persons posts, video and liked posts.
For the advanced report the system additionally analyses TikTok and also includes video analysis for Facebook, Instagram, X, tumbler and Flickr.
The report contains lots of useful information including the number of platforms analysed, how many posts have been checked and the number of posts with findings.
Each inappropriate post is allocated against one of the 10 key risk classifiers (extremist groups, hate speech, potential nudity, swearing and profanity, toxic language, violent images, drugs, weapons, firearms, client keywords) with a description of the finding and a link to the content.
The individual can view the post by clicking on the link. This post can then be amended or deleted as appropriate.
A Social Media Risk certificate is included at the end of the report which proves useful at job interviews, for example.
For individuals and small businesses, reports are emailed to the individual who originally requested and paid for it. There is then the option to download and save the report as a pdf for future reference.
For large businesses, all social media reports are retained and will be accessible within a UK secure portal for a period of 1 year. It is important for corporate customers to save local copies of the report and certificate output if retention beyond this time frame is required.
The 6 main social media platforms that are checked include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Medium and Tumblr.
Each social media platform is checked against the 10 key risk classifiers; extremist groups, hate speech, potential nudity, swearing and profanity, toxic language, violent images, drugs, weapons, firearms, client keywords.
The final report shows findings against each of these classifiers.
Individuals can post several times a day over a number of different platforms over a period of years. This amounts to thousands of written posts that need to be checked. Manual review of a post would typically take 10 seconds, to manually check an individual’s entire post history could take someone days!
Thankfully, our automated Social Media Check can perform a full check in under 60 minutes whilst removing all risks of unconscious bias or human error. All you need to do is send the link to your candidate, allow them to self-register, consent to the check, then sit back and wait for the report to arrive in your inbox.
Curious what an online search with Social Media Check report looks like?
Order a free report (worth £25) and see the type of information it finds. Complete this form and we will send you a unique code and how to run the process. It’s very easy to do and no logins are needed (our platform handles permissions).
You can run the report on your own social media, on a staff member, or on a candidate.
- Consent is always required before a check can happen
- The unique code does not expire, but it can only be used once
- Your report will be emailed to you within the hour