e-Safety in Schools

It has been created to enable teachers to support pupils in using technology responsibly and safely and focuses on several major issues that face today’s young people: Cyberbullying, searching the internet, well-being and health and privacy and personal safety. It is organised into age brackets for ease of use and is aimed at those teaching pupils aged 4-10 and 11+.

Fourteen leading companies involved within the industry, from mobile operators and social networking companies to internet and mobile content providers, worked closely with European Schoolnet to create the materials and consult with teachers during the site development. The participating companies currently are AOL, BEBO, Buongiorno, Deutsche Telekom /T-Mobile, Facebook, Google, GSMA Europe, Microsoft, MySpace, Orange, 02/Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Vodafone and Yahoo! Europe.

 See you there

Due to  the recent press attention and focus on e-Safety (See blog posts on New Home Office Proposals and The Byron Review) I'm seeking opinions to see if readers feel that enough is being done in Kent and indeed in Kent Schools to consider these important issues? What do readers perceive is in fact taking place in Kent around this topic and could anything be put in place to enhance or improve this?

 Comments are welcome.

The Home Office has made today new recommendations to improve safety for children on the internet. The package of new guidelines was developed in consultation with children's charities and social networking websites.

It calls for Social Networking sites to display links to organisations such as CEOP, NSPCC, Samaritans and others so abuse can be reported or users can quickly get help. It also wants internet firms and police forces to share reports of potentially illegal and suspicious behaviour to co-ordinate approaches.

The Home Office wants to make it more difficult for people registered as over 18 to search for and contact users who are under 18. Sites are also being urged to set the default privacy settings of under-18s to private to prevent strangers from accessing personal details on their profile pages. 

An important part of the guidelines is working to ensure children do not share too much personal information by educating them along with their parents, carers, teachers and those working with children. Parents will also be issued with an eight-point guide on how to ensure their children use sites safely. There are also plans for a kitemarking scheme for parental filtering software. Parents are being encouraged to talk to their children about the potential dangers of the internet and how on-line flirting or posting too much personal information could put them at risk. 

Perhaps the most controversial idea in the new recommendations from the Home Office is plans for all registered sex offenders to supply the Police with their e-mail address. These details would then be shared with Social Networking sites to ban access to registered offenders. Offenders who do not comply or supply false email addresses would face up to 5 years in jail. This would be applied retrospectively for the estimated 30,000 registered offenders. The mirrors the scheme currently operating in the US which aims to prevent convicted offenders accessing the more popular sites such as Myspace. However this move is being argued as being difficult to enforce as a new email account can be created in only a few minutes. A Home Office spokesman has said that failure to declare any new email accounts would be considered a criminal offence, but the police would ultimately rely on members of the public to tell them of unlawful actions.

This new guidance comes after the recent Ofcom investigation and Byron Review.  Ofcom interviewed 5,000 adults and 3,000 children and found nearly 47% of children aged between 8 and 17 had a profile on social networking sites. The Byron review found 41% of the children surveyed had their profile set so anyone, not just friends, could view it and that a third of those aged between 9 and 19 who used the internet weekly had received sexual comments via e-mail, instant message, chat or text message.

Opinions on these "recommendations" are welcome......

An article in today’s Daily Telegraph states that Social Networking sites will have to advertise the 999 emergency services number according to new government guidelines. It is hoped that this will encourage children to call the police directly to report abuse.

The Telegraph states they have obtained a copy of draft guidance due to be published on Friday by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

A recent Ofcom report into Social Networking found that 27% of 8 to 11-year-olds claim to have a profile page on a social networking website, despite age restrictions aimed at preventing pre-teens from using them.Ofcom also found that although 65% of parents say they have set rules for their children on internet use, only 53% of children were aware of them. 41% of children and young people who use social networking sites leave their profiles on the default "open" setting.