Child Safety on the Internet

Our reference: 1655 FOI
 
Dear Mrs Fitzsimons
 
Thank you for your request of 22 October 2009 in which you asked for the
following information:

This request relates to the safe use of the Internet by Primary and
Secondary School pupils in your region.

Resources:
1. The Byron Review, published 27 March 2008,
2. The Byron Review Action Plan, published 24th June 2008.

The resources above relate to the safety and education of children
using the Internet at Home and School, and the responsibility of
government, local and national to ensure that children are educated
and protected whilst doing so.

I hereby request under the Freedom of Information Act full details
of the Internet Safety Actions and Initiatives currently in place
throughout the region.

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 been
integrated into the curriculum?
- If yes, who is responsible for delivery and what
accreditations/training have they received? For example, teacher,
CEOP trained ambassador.
- 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?

2. Internet Filtering

- Do the primary and secondary schools within your authority have
internet filtering in place?
- If yes, what tools do you use? For example Hardware or Software?
- If yes, what is the name of your internet filtering supplier and
when was their contract last renewed/due for renewal?

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.

Your request is being considered and Oxfordshire County Council will
respond as soon as possible within the next 20 working days in compliance
with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This means that the council
will send a response to you by 19 November 2009.

 
There may be a fee payable for this information. You will be informed if
this is the case and you can decide if you wish to proceed with your
request.

 
If appropriate, the information requested can be made available in
alternative formats, including other languages, Braille, large print, and
audiocassette. If you require any of these formats then please let me
know.

 
Please contact me if you have any have further enquiries about your
request. I would be grateful if you could quote the reference number
given at the top of this email.

 
Yours sincerely,

Tracey Kelleher
Complaints and FOI Officer

Oxfordshire County Council
Legal and Democratic Services
Complaints and Freedom of Information Team
County Hall
New Road
Oxford
OX1 1ND

Tel: 01865 815448
Fax: 01865 247805
E-mail: [email address] (direct)
E-mail: [1][Oxfordshire County Council request email] (for FOI requests) or:
[2][email address] (for complaints)
Internet: [3]www.oxfordshire.gov.uk

This email, including attachments, may contain confidential information.
If you have received it in error, please notify the sender by reply and
delete it immediately. Views expressed by the sender may not be those of
Oxfordshire County Council. Council emails are subject to the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/emaildiscl...

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[Oxfordshire County Council request email]
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/

Our reference: 1655 FOI

Dear Mrs Fitzsimons
 
Thank you for your request of 22 October 2009 in which you asked for the
following information:

This request relates to the safe use of the Internet by Primary and
Secondary School pupils in your region.

Resources:
1. The Byron Review, published 27 March 2008,
2. The Byron Review Action Plan, published 24th June 2008.

The resources above relate to the safety and education of children
using the Internet at Home and School, and the responsibility of
government, local and national to ensure that children are educated
and protected whilst doing so.

I hereby request under the Freedom of Information Act full details
of the Internet Safety Actions and Initiatives currently in place
throughout the region.

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 been
integrated into the curriculum?
- If yes, who is responsible for delivery and what
accreditations/training have they received? For example, teacher,
CEOP trained ambassador.
- 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?

2. Internet Filtering

- Do the primary and secondary schools within your authority have
internet filtering in place?
- If yes, what tools do you use? For example Hardware or Software?
- If yes, what is the name of your internet filtering supplier and
when was their contract last renewed/due for renewal?

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.

Taking each of your points in turn:

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 been
integrated into the curriculum?
This is currently being looked at and developed. It will be ready for the
new academic year.
- If yes, who is responsible for delivery and what
accreditations/training have they received? For example, teacher,
CEOP trained ambassador.
Oxfordshire County Council's Schools Consultant for the Healthy School
team is leading on the development of classroom resources. She is a
qualified teacher with a National Professional Qualification for Headship
(NPQH) whose current role is working as an advisory teacher for the
council. She has completed the first part of her CEOP training
and finishes the ambassador training in the New Year. She will also have
obtained the European Pedagogical ICT Licence (EPICT) qualification by
early next year. This will mean that she will be able to train and
accredit colleagues within the council. 

- If yes, how often is internet safety training integrated into the
school curriculum, i.e. weekly, monthly etc
At present, it varies from school to school, depending on their set up for
Personal, Social and Health Education and Citizenship (PSHE). We are
recommending that all children receive assemblies on cyber-safety and
cyber-bullying and that schools also deliver focused PSHE sessions. Many
of our schools have been participating in Oxfordshire Anti-Bullying Week
(16 - 20 November), which focuses on cyber-bullying.

- If no, what steps/timeframes are being taken for implementation?
Cyber-safety and cyber-bullying is a very high priority for us. By the
end of July 2010, we will have trained more colleagues and provided
high quality resources. We are also hoping that we will have completed a
pilot study trialling safeguarding software.

The council is firmly committed to the Safeguarding of Children and Young
People and regards this as a priority. Schools are aware of the increased
focus on Safeguarding within the new OFSTED framework and recognise the
importance of tackling cyber-safety as part of this.

 
Over the last year a team chaired by the manager of the Oxfordshire
Safeguarding Children Board (OSCB) has been working together to plan and
develop a strategy for Cybersafety. Their first action was to begin to
investigate what the issues were for children and young people and the
staff working with them in school. Some informal discussions were carried
out and it has been recognised that this is an area that staff need
support with. Children and young people were also clear that they would
like support with this work.

 
As a result, an awareness-raising and training day was held in May 2009
for adults. This included teachers, police officers, and educational
psychologists. This focused on issues raised and the findings of the Byron
report. Speakers were national speakers such as Dr Jo Bryce from the
CyberSpace Research Team at the University of Lancashire, the CEO from
Childnet, Nathalie Noret from York St John University and Mark Blois, a
lawyer who specialises in this field.

 
The impact of the day was significant. Feedback was excellent and
colleagues said that as a result of the training, they had increased their
understanding of the role they should play. They also requested further
training.

 
With this in mind, when the council worked on the planning of their recent
Anti-Bullying conference (16 November), we decided to run separate
workshops for staff and the children, to enable them to meet these needs.
Feedback from the day was very positive and all participants were provided
with extensive resources including the Department for Children, Schools
and Families (DCSF) Cyber Bullying guidance.

Training for school liaison officers and other colleagues will take place
in February 2010. This is accredited training and will focus on cyber
safety and cyber bullying.

 
As part of the education work, we have carried out some more detailed work
in one primary and one secondary school. The children themselves designed
and carried out surveys, shared their findings with the school and made
recommendations to the team. In the primary school, the children also led
and an awareness-raising evening with parents with the support of the
Healthy Schools School Advisory Teacher and the school liaison police
officer.

 
The council's Anti-Bullying Co-ordinator has made cyber-bullying a high
priority in the Anti-Bullying plan. The Anti-Bullying Co-ordinator and
Healthy Schools team have jointly promoted schools participation in an
Anti-Bullying Alliance regional survey on cyber bullying including
collecting Oxfordshire data. After the Anti-Bullying conference
a session was organised from Childnet for adults unable to attend on the
day. Parents' evenings have been organised and a number of these are
taking place across the county.

As well as teaching resources, the Anti-Bullying Co-ordinator has produced
an audit tool to help schools identify any areas for development with
cyber-bullying provision and all schools have been given access to the
DCSF guidance on cyber bullying and links to other resources via the
Anti-Bullying web pages.

2. Internet Filtering

- Do the primary and secondary schools within your authority have
internet filtering in place?
- If yes, what tools do you use? For example Hardware or Software?
- If yes, what is the name of your internet filtering supplier and
when was their contract last renewed/due for renewal?

For Oxfordshire schools within the Oxfordshire County Council authority
area, there are filtering arrangements in place to block access to certain
sites. Websites are classified and certain classifications are blocked.
The Websense company delivers daily updates which ICT Services then apply.
We have a licence from Websense to use their services (as opposed to a
contract). This was renewed in October 2009 and is valid for one year.
Website addresses will often be blocked by an Internet Service Provider
(ISP) or by a web filtering service - however, these addresses may
reappear in another guise. Similarly, keyword and other links to websites
frequently change.

The centrally managed filtering policy is applied to internet access for
schools by default. This policy blocks access to internet sites that have
been identified and listed. Schools e-mail Oxfordshire County Council's
ICT Service Desk directly who will then block additional sites on request.
A blocked site will then only be unblocked if requested by the ICT
Curriculum Adviser.

Some schools within the Oxfordshire County Council authority - about 55 to
date - have opted to manage their own filtering policy. This means that
the school can block any site or, by contrast, only allow access to
certain sites it deems appropriate. Schools take different views on web
filtering. Some schools want internet access to be highly restricted.
Other schools want there to be minimal restrictions and emphasise teaching
and learning on safe internet usage and personal responsibility. Many
schools adopt a stance that is somewhere in between.

If a school opts to undertake their own local filtering, ICT Services
offer to visit to show them how to administer a local filtering policy.

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.

There has been one instance known to the council's ICT Services. The type
of school was a primary school and the date of breach was around the 7th
October 2009.

The type of unsuitable material accessed was an inappropriate word search
on Google Images which displayed 'soft' pornographic images.

The council was notified, initially, by a phone call from the Head Teacher
to the ICT Service Desk asking for filtering to be applied. The Schools
Consultant for the Healthy School team was also notified by a phone call
from a senior member of staff at the school in question.

Most schools operate an Acceptable Use of ICT Policy that their pupils
sign up to. Therefore, any breaches of that policy are usually dealt with
locally by the school, and may not necessarily be reported to ICT.

Feedback

If you would like to feed back to the FOI Team, please email
[1][Oxfordshire County Council request email].

Help Us To get It Right

If you are dissatisfied with the service or response you have received you
can complain as follows:
 
o Use the online complaints form on our website -
[2]www.oxfordshire.gov.uk;
 
o Complete the leaflet "How do I complain about a council service?".
Copies are available from any Oxfordshire library or by telephoning 01865
815906. Large print and audio tape versions are available on request from
this number;

 
o Write to us at our FREEPOST address:

Complaints and Comments
Oxfordshire County Council
FREEPOST (SCE 7709)
Oxford OX1 1YA.
 
Please let me know if you have further enquiries. I would be grateful if
you could use the reference number given at the top of this email.

Yours sincerely,

Tracey Kelleher
Complaints and FOI Officer

Oxfordshire County Council
Legal and Democratic Services
Complaints and Freedom of Information Team
County Hall
New Road
Oxford
OX1 1ND

Tel: 01865 815448
Fax: 01865 247805
E-mail: [email address] (direct)
E-mail: [3][Oxfordshire County Council request email] (for FOI requests) or:
[4][email address] (for complaints)
Internet: [5]www.oxfordshire.gov.uk

This email, including attachments, may contain confidential information.
If you have received it in error, please notify the sender by reply and
delete it immediately. Views expressed by the sender may not be those of
Oxfordshire County Council. Council emails are subject to the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/emaildiscl...

References

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1. mailto:[Oxfordshire County Council request email]
2. file://../3.04%20Information%20requests/3.16.02%20Requests%202006/Local%20Settings/3.16.02.08%20Requests%20August%202006/FOI%20344/www.oxfordshire.gov.uk
3. mailto:[Oxfordshire County Council request email]
4. mailto:[email address]
5. http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/