FAO: head teachers, senior leaders and DSLs
Big Brother is about to return to our TV screens, 22 years after it first aired in the UK. In 2000, the big brother house attracted a huge, often younger audience, and provoked a debate around the perils of constant surveillance. Since then, the internet and social media has created another world where young people are quickly drawn in and can easily let their guard down. Unlike with TV in 2000, there is no 9pm watershed and young people can access the internet alone, on any device and at a much younger age.
During the coronavirus pandemic, young people were encouraged to use online platforms to communicate and continue their learning. Younger children were taught new skills and now they are more aware of and curious about the internet in school.
Although the internet does enrich learning experiences, it can also facilitate inappropriate communication among young people and expose them to negative activities or behaviours. At the extreme end of the spectrum this includes gang rivalry, bullying, suicide and sexual abuse.
That’s why it is vital that school leaders monitor the content their students are accessing and engaging in. This type of monitoring may have been seen as being too ‘big brother’ even a decade ago, but now teachers and parents are acutely aware of the risks that children unfortunately must contend with.
Ofcom’s media use and attitudes report 2022 asked for the views of young people aged 3-17 and parents. It found that:
36% of children aged 8-17 said they had seen something ‘worrying or nasty’ online in the past 12 months.
84% of 8-17 year olds said they had been bullied via technology, such as through messaging, social media and online.
70% of parents of children under 16 were concerned about their child seeing age-inappropriate content, such as violence, bad language, disturbing content and sexual or ‘adult’ content.
In the mid-2000s Facebook was the social media network of choice. Now young people use YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok, Discord and message boards to communicate online. The goalposts keep changing and it’s important that schools keep up. This involves monitoring all online activity and understanding the type of risks.
CORE is a knowledge base on children and youth in the digital age. It has recommended a CO:RE 4Cs classification, used by the Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance, that recognises that online risks arise when a child:
Engages with and/or is exposed to potentially harmful Content
Experiences and/or is targeted by potentially harmful Contact
Witnesses, participates in and/or is a victim of potentially harmful Conduct
Is party to and/or exploited by a potentially harmful Contract
Monitoring software can be a critical tool for detecting safeguarding issues. However, they tend to pull through a vast amount of content due to ‘false positives’, wrongly flagging issues as a concern when they’re not actually anything to worry about. Sorting through these possible red flags can be an administrative burden for your staff members, who might only then spot a real issue when it’s too late.
A full monitoring service can help your school to identify real concerns and respond quickly and appropriately to them. At Entrust, our digital monitoring experts are trained to spot a potential issue and will escalate to your school staff on the day that it happens. Our service captures over 200,000 violations a year and in 2022, 29% of escalations were related to suicide and emotional health, 15% sexual behaviour and 19% pornography.
Importantly, we understand that 80% of information comes from what a young person sees on screen, not from what they type. A child may be exposed to messages that promote suicide, and although they may not respond by typing on the device, the impact on them can be hugely distressing. That’s why we monitor what the young person types and what they see on screen.
With a full monitoring service, you can have peace of mind that online captures are being constantly reviewed and that you do not need to take any action unless prompted by our safeguarding analysts. We will help you understand the online risks your students are facing and enable your staff to focus on improving learning outcomes, safe in the knowledge that any inappropriate online activity will be raised immediately.
To find out more about our comprehensive online safeguarding solution visit our website.