Child Safety on the Internet

Dear Mrs Fitsimons

Thank you for contacting Derbyshire County Council I have forwarded your
email to our FOI team for reply.

Regards
Nathan Moore
Call Derbyshire Administrator
Call Derbyshire
08456 058 058

show quoted sections

Dear Mrs Fitzsimons

I write to acknowledge receipt of your request for information per your
e-mail below of today.

This is being passed to the relevant Council dept for a response.

Please get in touch with me, should you not hear from the Council by
19/11/09.

Yours sincerely

Rajat Jain

Solicitor, Interim Information Manager

for David Tysoe, County Solicitor,

Derbyshire County Council

County Hall

Matlock

DE4 3AG

01629 538373

VOIP 38373

show quoted sections

Dear Mrs Fitzsimons

Thank you for your information request received on 22 October 2009. Your
request has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 and the answers to your questions are detailed below:

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?

Schools use a range of programs for teaching e-safety.

Who is responsible for delivery and what accreditations/training have they
received?

For example, teacher, CEOP trained ambassador.

Our IT consultants introduce e-safety programs at the termly briefings,
but it is for individual schools to decide what they use. If we introduce
a commercial program we are not allowed to recommend it, even if we think
it is first class. We do refer schools to the CEOP 'Think U Know' suite
of programs.

We have a trained CEOP Ambassador but this person has no time to do
anything other than comment on e-safety in Kaleidos training.

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?

We don't know about e-safety in the curriculum although without exception
schools say they cover this and it is effective. Certainly on the small
number of occasions when an issue has arisen the response of children to
inappropriate materials has been good.

2. Internet Filtering

Do the primary and secondary schools within your authority have internet
filtering in place?

Yes where the connectivity is provided through embc.

What tools do you use? For example Hardware or Software?

Netsweeper.

If yes, what is the name of your internet filtering supplier and when was
their contract last renewed/due for renewal?

Synetrix, managed service provider. The contract was renewed in April
2008, and is renewable on 31 March 2011. The specific product,
Netsweeper, is reviewed against the contract KPI's. If at any time the
service did not perform then remedial action would be taken including
consideration of an alternative provider.

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.

There were no access breaches to illegal sites.

The Internet filtering is provided through the Netsweeper content
filtering and access management solution. The managed service provided by
Synetrix and embc is Becta accredited for education. The solution offered
to schools allows them to adopt local filtering policies to better meet
the needs of their staff and children. Schools have access sites within
centrally blocked categories where they have made a local decision to
allow access to meet educational and management needs.

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.

If a school contacts embc and/or Synetrix the matter is investigated
rapidly and appropriate action taken, for example a complaint from one
school relating to access to an unsuitable site (games not pornographic)
was a result of the site filtering policy level set by the local school
site administrator. Advice is provided to schools on appropriate settings
and use of the local level filtering.

If a breach is detected by embc through the hardware/software supplier the
local authority is notified of the details. Both embc and each local
authority have the ability to run detailed reports on access made to any
of the blocked categories at any time.

I trust this response is satisfactory. However, if you are unhappy with
the way the authority has handled your request, you may ask for an
internal review. Please contact Rajat Jain, Information Access Officer,
Legal Services Department, County Hall, Matlock, Derbyshire DE4 3AG who
will arrange an internal review of your case.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information
Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9
5AF.

If you have any queries about this please contact me.

Kind regards

Ian Johnson, Assistant Director (Safeguarding & Specialist Services)

Children & Younger Adults Department

Tel: 01629 580000 Ext 32005

Direct Line: 01629 532005

show quoted sections