Dear Mrs Fitzsimons,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST -

Your request, dated 23^rd October 2009, has been passed to People Group for a response on behalf of Northumberland County Council.

1. Internet Safety Education provided as part of the school curriculum.

Within your schools is there a specific program aimed at teaching children about staying safe online, including cyber bullying, which has been integrated into the curriculum?
We promote the use of the Think You Know materials, along with other resources from CEOPS and Childnet International.  We have been promoting to schools the Kara, Winston and the SMART crew materials as part of an integrated L.A. strategy for e-safety which we are formally launching at our cyber-bullying conference on the 12th November.

The integrated L.A. strategy includes training materials for pupils, staff (teaching and non teaching), Governors, parents and the community. Alongside this we have guidance from the Safeguarding Board on dealing with incidents, L.A. materials on policies and procedures and technical infrastructure to support tracking and monitoring of internet use. We are also offering to accredit schools who provide all of the above.

If yes, who is responsible for delivery and what accreditations/training have they received? For example, teacher, CEOP trained ambassador.
Schools are responsible for delivery and to support this all schools have a designated person responsible for e-safety who has either attended CEOP's or L.A. training. The curriculum support team are all CEOPs ambassadors and have been involved in providing training for schools, e-safety designated staff and also specific e-safety training for  Headteachers and governors.

Alongside this we require all schools to have a range of appropriate policies which have been ratified by the Governing body, an annual response to the L.A. which indicates the designated person for e-safety, that they have been trained and that policies are in place and ratified.

The above is a requirement of all schools, failure to comply means the L.A. may remove Internet services from the school until safety procedures are assured.
If yes, how often is internet safety training integrated into the school curriculum, i.e. weekly, monthly etc

If no, what steps/timeframes are being taken for implementation?
This is a matter for schools. They have control over their curriculum, not the LA. A list of schools within Northumberland which you could contact regarding their curriculum can be found on our website http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=3444

2. Internet Filtering

Do the primary and secondary schools within your authority have internet filtering in place?
Yes. All schools go through a global filter provided by DurhamNet. Primary's also have equinet boxes which can provide secondary filtering. Secondary schools also tend to implement a range of other independent secondary filters of their own choice. We have also been piloting Policy Central Enterprise in schools of all phases and have just bought it for all schools. This additional monitoring and filtering tool should be available to all schools by Christmas.

If yes, what tools do you use? For example Hardware or Software?
Software/Hardware used by DurhamNet; squidguard and Secure Web gateway

-If yes, what is the name of your internet filtering supplier and when was their contract last renewed/due for renewal?
Forensic Software - tender completed in October.

3. Internet Filtering Breaches

Have any of the Schools within the past 24 months experienced a breach of Internet Filtering where children were able to access pornography or Indecent images. Please provide details of School type(Primary or Secondary), date of breach and type of unsuitable material accessed.

-If a breach of security occurred how was your authority notified? For example, by a parent, by the school, through an automated alert provided by hardware/software supplier.

No such a breach has been reported to Northumberland County Council. You may wish to request this information from schools at the web address given above.

Kind regards,

Faye Menzies

Freedom of information

People Group

[email address]

Trevor Doughty, Executive Director of People

County Hall, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 2EF

(T) 0845 600 6400 (E) [email address] (W) www.northumberland.gov.uk