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Not every staff member will be logged in to Signal when they need to report a concern. Email reporting lets anyone with the school’s Signal email address flag a safeguarding issue quickly — without opening the app. Emailed concerns arrive as draft incidents on your dashboard, ready to be reviewed, completed, and published.

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How email reporting works

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A staff member sends an email
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When a member of staff has a safeguarding concern, they send an email to your school’s dedicated Signal email address. The email should describe the concern in detail, ideally naming the student involved and providing as much context as possible.
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Signal processes the email
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Signal automatically receives the email and creates a draft incident. The email body becomes the incident description, and any attachments are preserved.
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The draft appears on the dashboard
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The draft incident appears in the My Drafts section of your dashboard. You can see who sent the email and when.
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Review and complete the draft
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Open the draft, review the content, and complete the incident by:
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  • Selecting the student the concern relates to
  • Adding categories, location, and agencies
  • Reviewing the AI’s suggestions
  • Editing the description if needed
  • Setting any visibility exclusions
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    Publish the incident
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    Once complete, publish the draft. It becomes a full incident, visible on the student’s timeline and checked against alert rules.

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    Finding your school’s Signal email address

    Your school’s dedicated Signal email address is displayed on the dashboard in the My Drafts section. Click the copy button next to the email address to copy it to your clipboard. Share this address with all staff who might need to report concerns — teachers, teaching assistants, lunchtime supervisors, office staff, and anyone else with a safeguarding responsibility.
    Consider adding the Signal email address to your school’s safeguarding noticeboard, staff handbook, or induction materials so it is easy to find when needed.

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    Managing drafts

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    Reviewing a draft

    Click on a draft in the My Drafts section to open it. You will see the original email content, the sender’s details, and any attachments that were included.

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    Editing a draft

    You can edit the description before publishing if you need to add detail, correct information, or format the text. The original email content is preserved as the starting point.

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    Publishing a draft

    Once you have selected the student, added categories, and reviewed the details, click Save to publish the draft as a complete incident. It will follow the same process as any other incident — AI analysis, alert checks, and appearing on the relevant dashboards.

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    Deleting a draft

    If a draft is not a safeguarding concern — for example, if it was sent in error — you can delete it. Deleted drafts are removed permanently.
    Only delete drafts that are genuinely not safeguarding concerns. If in doubt, publish the incident and manage it through the normal process. It is better to have a record that turns out to be minor than to delete something that matters.

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    Tips for staff sending email reports

    Include the student’s full name in the email so the reviewer can quickly identify who the concern is about.
    Be specific. Describe what you observed, heard, or were told. Include dates, times, and locations where possible.
    Attach evidence if you have it — photographs, screenshots, or scanned documents can all be included as email attachments and will be carried across to the draft.
    Email drafts appear on the dashboard of any staff member with an appropriate role. Once reviewed and published, the incident becomes visible to other staff according to normal access rules.