P50: Backbeat
Social safety
Social media is here to stay. Former primary school head and e-safety consultant Karl Hopwood describes some of the safety issues.
The 2011 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains a number of new entries including OMG and LOL – a reminder that we are living in a 21st century digital world. E-safety has become a buzzword in many schools and Ofsted added to the interest with its 2010 report The safe use of new technologies.
The report found that schools using ‘locked down’ systems were less effective than ‘managed’ systems in helping pupils learn to use the technology safely. Locked down systems protect pupils while in school, but managed systems, with fewer inaccessible sites, are better at helping them learn how to take responsibility for their own safety. This doesn’t mean schools should ‘switch off’ their filtering, but the school which gives staff the same access as year 1 pupils is not providing appropriate filtering.
I work in two or three schools a week, supporting staff, pupils, governors and parents with e-safety issues. The biggest concern is about cyberbullying, particularly on social networking sites. Parents also worry about what their child may do on Facebook and often feel ill-equipped to deal with what they discover.
However teachers and parents should feel able to tackle the issues pupils are facing when they go online. Ultimately e-safety is about behaviour, values, right and wrong – something teachers and parents have dealt with since the dawn of time.
Adults have many misconceptions about the technologies children are using. Facebook et al have many positive aspects, and just happen to be the way young people communicate – we did it differently but we still did it. Yes, there are challenges and that is why schools have to engage with it.
Showing pupils what I have found on Facebook or similar sites, or simply mentioning the name of one of their photo albums (which is publicly available), can have a huge impact. Once we explain how easy it was to find, young people can understand and will take time to think about privacy and the consequences of their actions. A year 8 pupil I worked with recently told me she knew it was wrong to post unkind comments about a teacher online, but said she never expected that any adults would read them (on Twitter).
Teachers need to be particularly careful when using social media. Parents have high expectations of us as a profession and we would be naive to think they won’t google the one who is going to be teaching their child for the next 12 months. The NUT e-safety policy makes it clear that staff should “not post information and photos about themselves, or school- related matters, publicly that they wouldn’t want employers, colleagues, pupils or parents to see”.
All staff need to be aware of such guidance if we are to start taking e-safety seriously in a way that will help and support everyone.
NUT e-safety guidance
Download the NUT’s e-safety advice for members and a model school e-safety policy at
www.teachers.org.uk/briefings.
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