Child Safety on the Internet

Dear Mrs Fitzsimons,

Re: Request for Information - Safe use of internet by pupils, reference
number: CHS/7X7G5B

Thank you for your request for information, which was received by
Manchester City Council on 22 October.

It may take up to 20 working days (approximately four weeks) for the
Council to consider your request and to provide a formal response. If
this timescale needs to be extended to consider an exemption you will be
notified and kept informed.

If you have any queries, please contact me on the number above.

Yours sincerely,

Mick Wilson
Customer & Business Support Manager
Manchester City Council Children's Services
Overseas House
Quay Street
Manchester, M3 3BB
Tel: 0161 234 7109
Internal: 801 7109
Textphone: 0161 234 7452
Fax: 0161 274 7070
Email: [email address]

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Dear Ms Fitzsimmons,

Re: Request for Information - Safe use of internet by school pupils -
Reference Number: CHS/7X7G5B

Thank you for your request for information, which was received by
Manchester City Council on 22 October 2009 and has been considered under
the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You asked:

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.

In response to your request, I have summarised the information as follows.

1. Schools buying into CEOP (Child Exploitation and On-line Protection
Centre) scheduled training courses and by attending CLC (City Learning
Centre) courses can deliver the materials.

Ultimately this is a school-based decision. The CLC***s provide guidance
through CEOP training that helps schools to be informed regarding the
policies and strategies adopted by them.

Steps have been taken by the LA (Local Authority) through CLC***s, one in
the South and a second in the North of the City. Each run courses based

around CEOP and delivered by a CEOP ambassador. In addition they are also
running two safety competitions for children in schools.

2. MEWAN Schools
Schools who buy into the MEWAN (Manchester Education Wide Area Network)
service use the system with two layers of filtering in place. In addition
MEWAN offers a central filtering through the Equinet Cache Box Smoothwall
filtering system.
Non-MEWAN Schools
Schools who are part of the BSF scheme receive a central and school-based
Cache Box Filtering solution from Ramesys.
St Matthews and Eastserve Schools
Both organisations have their own filtering solutions in place that are
all BECTA compliant. I understand the latter offers two products one for
school children and a second for Adults which is funded from
advertisements.

A mixture of hardware and software.

The Equinet units were supplied by Stone Computing and are less than one
year old.

The contract details are commercially sensitive.

3. Breaches are rare. The last one recorded was at a primary school where
a reported image breach occurred.

The head followed procedure and phoned the MIS Helpdesk for support.
Schools can also email [email address].

This information may be subject to copyright. Freedom of Information does
not give you an automatic right to re-use this information in a way that
would infringe copyright, for example, by publishing the information or
making multiple copies.

Please note if you are not satisfied with this response you may ask for an
internal review. If you wish to complain you should contact me in the
first instance.

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 .

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Andrews
Head of Education Services (Stategic Inclusion)

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