Highfield School removes all children’s imagery from website

A leading private school in the South Downs has made the important decision to remove all imagery of children from their website and marketing material from September. Highfield School in Liphook has taken this new approach to sharing school life in an effort to protect their pupils following national fears around the misuse of photographs and how easy it is to manipulate an image. The school, set on the borders of Hampshire, Surrey and West Sussex is an independent, co-educational nursery, pre-prep and prep school for children aged two to 13.

Suzannah Cryer, Head of Highfield School says: "Everything we do, from how we teach to how we care for children in the corridors and on the playing fields, is guided by one principle: safeguarding comes first. That principle doesn't stop at the school gates. It extends to how we handle images, because a photograph is, in its own way, a piece of someone's identity – and protecting that identity is part of protecting them.

"Safeguarding also means thinking ahead. As the digital world changes, so too must the way we think about protecting children within it. We don't want to wait for something to happen before we respond; we want to make thoughtful choices now that reflect the world our children are growing up in. We want to be at the forefront of that thinking, leading by example and being willing to change our own practice when we believe we could do better."

Over the past 12 months Highfield's marketing team have been working with acclaimed photographer, Roj Whitelock and production team, Bob Cryer and Nathan Theys, to tell the story of Highfield's success through creative photography and videography that showcases the work the school does without showing children's faces.

Caroline Beldham, Director of Marketing and Communications at Highfield said: "We are not stepping away from celebrating school life – far from it. We still want to share the joy of a nativity performance, the pride of sports day and the delight of a finished piece of artwork, but we are changing how we do this. We are being more intentional about what we share publicly with no identifiable images of children on our website, social media or other public digital platforms. We've found new ways of capturing the moment using wider photographs with children taken from a distance or close-up pictures where a child isn't identifiable. There will naturally be moments when this approach is more difficult, but we see this as an opportunity to think more creatively about how we capture and share school life."

Highfield staff will still be capturing photographs of children at the school, helping to create a record of their time there, but these will only be shared privately with parents and within school publications.

Suzannah Cryer concluded: "This is a big change in marketing strategy for us, but when we weigh up a striking photo on our homepage against the safety of a child, it's an obvious choice as to what we do. Protecting a child will always smatter more to us than a perfect picture."

This move comes hot on the heels of Highfield being named the Mind Champion in Country & Town House's School House Awards where they were recognised for the positive work they do to support their pupils' mental health. They were also recently shortlisted in the Pastoral Care and Wellbeing category of the Talk Education Awards for Innovation in Education 2026.