Wearable technology is transitioning from niche gadgets to mainstream consumer devices. For Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) and school leaders, this shift introduces novel safeguarding, privacy, and data protection challenges. While these devices offer some educational and accessibility benefits, they also blur the boundary between ordinary personal accessories and discreet recording equipment.
There are a lot of alarmist reports in the media about Artificial Intelligence and wearable technology. This blog provides a calm and clear overview of wearable tech, real-world risks, the UK legal landscape, and proactive steps your school can take to protect children and staff.
Examples of Wearable Technology and Capabilities
Modern wearable AI spans several forms, including smart glasses (such as Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta), smartwatches, health-tracking rings, and body-worn sensors. These devices integrate functions such as high-definition cameras, open-ear speakers, microphones and cloud-connected generative AI assistants directly into standard-looking personal accessories.
Unlike traditional smartphones, which require a visible physical gesture to position and record, smart glasses can capture photos, video, and audio from a first-person perspective, precisely where the wearer is looking. Key capabilities include:
- Hands-free image and audio capturing and live-streaming directly to social media or cloud platforms.
- Real-time AI voice conversation and translation, allowing users to hear live audio translations of spoken dialogue.
- Context-aware visual processing, enabling the built-in AI to analyse surroundings, read printed text, identify objects, or answer questions about what the camera sees.
- Messaging, calls, and visual displays, placing information directly into the wearer’s field of view.
Accessibility and Educational Benefits
Alongside the risks (which we will come to), it is important to recognise that these technologies do also bring considerable opportunities for some, and so outright bans would limit the following potential:
- Assistance for Visually Impaired Learners: Smart glasses can describe physical surroundings, read aloud classroom worksheets, and connect users hands-free with sighted volunteers, using open-ear audio that avoids looking like a traditional ‘disability marker’.
- Language and Communication Support: Live translation features allow people learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) to participate more fully.
- Targeted Assistive Learning: When properly vetted, wearable devices can support cognitive processing and vocational training, e.g. coaching someone through a technical process.
Known Risks and UK Law
Despite these benefits, discreet wearables introduce significant risks within a school environment.
Privacy Erosion
While some smart glasses feature small LED capture lights to signal recording, these indicators are easily missed and misunderstood. Furthermore, instances have been reported where users deliberately covered or attempted to disable recording lights altogether (and some don’t have a signal to communicate that capturing is occurring).
Reported Examples of Harm
- Covert Filming and Extortion: Investigations have revealed smart glasses being used to secretly film shop workers, ferry staff, and young women in public without consent. Some of the footage can be embarrassing or invasive and sometimes footage has been posted online to generate views, or victims have been demanded to pay to remove content.
- Integrity: Smart glasses linked to mobile phones have been caught being used during High Court proceedings to secretly receive live coaching and provide answers during questioning. This poses a threat to assessment and exam integrity in schools.
- Domestic Abuse and Stalking: Refuge reported a 62% increase in tech-facilitated abuse referrals, noting that smart accessories and health trackers are increasingly weaponised by perpetrators to track locations and monitor victims.
- Deepfakes and Image Manipulation: Captured images can easily be fed into third-party AI tools to generate non-consensual deepfakes, voice clones, or nudified images of pupils or staff.
What Does the Law Say?
In the UK, there is no general legal restriction against wearing or using camera-enabled smart glasses in public spaces. While public filming is rarely a criminal offence on its own, existing laws on harassment, stalking, voyeurism, and intimate-image abuse apply where recording causes distress or fear. Data protection law (UK GDPR) applies to commercial recording, but personal household use often falls outside of this.
Crucially, however, there is a fundamental difference between what is legally permissible on a public street and what is permissible on school grounds, where schools hold a statutory duty of care.
Proactive Steps for School Leaders and DSLs
To safeguard pupils and staff effectively while remaining supportive of genuine accessibility needs, school leaders are recommended to consider the following actions:
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Update Policies: Include in your policies capability-based rules (rather than simply naming specific tech that can or can’t be used in school) so that as technology changes, your policy remains valid. Consider your AUPs, Online Safety, Staff Code of Conduct, Intimate Care, Off-Site Trips and Visitors policies in particular. Align policies with Department for Education (DfE) statutory guidance on mobile devices and Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) exam regulations.
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Enforce Clear Pupil Guidelines: Prohibit pupils from wearing or using personal smart glasses or recording wearables on school grounds or on trips, etc. Require unapproved devices to be powered down and stored securely. Consider how you communicate these guidelines to pupils in an effective way.
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Establish Exception Review Processes: Create a formal approval process via your DSL and Data Protection Officer (DPO) for assistive learning wearables. Ensure cloud data harvesting and third-party AI model training on pupil data are strictly disabled before permitting a pupil to use it in school. Create a specific agreement with children (and parents) using such devices about how they should and should not be used at school. Devise clear processes for recording, monitoring and reviewing these decisions.
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Set Explicit Visitor Expectations: Ban operational smart wearables for parents, contractors, and visitors during assemblies, sports days, and school performances. Post clear entry signage stating expectations before visitors enter the school site. Support staff to recognise how they might identify someone using image-capturing or other technologies that are not permitted, e.g. office staff and site manager.
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Maintain Zero-Tolerance Zones: Strictly prohibit all smart wearables and recording devices in changing rooms, toilets, medical rooms, and therapeutic spaces.
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Establish Clear Breach Procedures: If an unapproved device is found in a sensitive area, confiscate it (where possible as per DfE advice), place it in a shielded location to prevent remote data wiping, notify your DSL/DPO, and contact police if you believe an offence has been committed, e.g. taking sexualised imagery of children. Where staff are involved, follow your managing allegations processes and speak to the LADO for advice.
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Review your Curriculum: Digital literacy and online safety feature within the 2025 RSHE Guidance. Consider how you support children in your school to understand the capabilities and risks of technology and in particular artificial intelligence. Enable children to make informed, safe and responsible decisions about using technology.
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Work with Parents: Help parents to understand the ever-changing world of digital technology and online safety so that they can make informed decisions about supporting their child/ren appropriately.
Conclusion and LGfL Resources
Safeguarding against emerging technology requires proactive governance rather than prohibition. By defining clear parameters, school leaders can protect their community while embracing the legitimate benefits of assistive innovation.
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