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Before Christmas, the Department of Education announced new measures to protect children from cyber bullying, access to pornography and online radicalisation.

The proposals included:

Schools to have robust filtering in place so that children are not allowed to access inappropriate sites. This also includes access to content promoting extremist ideology which could be used in the process of radicalising children and young people.

Teaching about online safeguarding through the PHSE and Computing curriculum.

The measures have been welcomed by a number of bodies including the National Association of Head Teachers. The DfE will also be working with a number of other partners including the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) and the National Crime Agency CEOP Command to update resources for parents and a new online training package will be launched for health professionals to assist them with handling online risks.

However, questions have to be raised about the timing and how effective these measures will be? Releasing consultation details about the proposed measures three days before Christmas is surely not the best time to engage with practitioners as they take their deserved rest after a hard term. In addition, the focus on producing new resources for parents seems a little misguided when Vodafone and other organisations produce valuable magazines and leaflets which cover the same ground.

Great strides have been made over the past eight years with internet safety in the UK, but these latest measures seem to go over old ground and represent nothing new. Compared to the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner (https://esafety.gov.au/) in Australia who provide a vast array of updated resources for schools and parents, there seems to be a lot of duplication with the current measures.

In recent staff training, I showed the CEOP educational film, ‘Jigsaw’. It is over five years old, but it still gets many educational professionals concerned about what parents should be doing to protect their children. One staff member spoke about how this should be shown in doctors surgeries and on primetime television. In many ways, there needs to be a united strategy from the public and commercial sector so that it is not only schools who are targeting parents with the positive e-safety message.

As I visit educational establishments, there are many comments for practitioners that they are concerned about the impact of unmonitored use of devices by toddlers and young children. There needs to be a real focus from policy makers to look at how to provide more support for parents as they support their children in the digital world.

If you would like to add your thoughts to this topic, please use the comments section below

Recording incidents of extremism and radicalisation

The counter-terrorism and security bill was granted royal assent on 21 February 2015, which places a statutory duty on named organisations, including schools, to have due regard towards the need to prevent people being drawn into terrorism.

Ofsted inspects how schools carry out safeguarding and other duties, including the effectiveness of these arrangements to ensure all pupils are safe. This includes the approach in keeping pupils safe from the dangers of radicalisation and extremism, including what is done when suspected pupils are vulnerable.

The most important part of this security bill is ‘keeping pupils safe from the danger of radicalisation and extremism.’

With such a recent surge of activity and emphasis for schools to adopt and embed a prevent strategy within a very short space of time, senior leadership are struggling to educate themselves – let alone their staff and pupils. Educating staff and pupils is extremely important and as best practise prevails, educating through a whole school approach and zero tolerance policy is helping schools to raise awareness and identify incidents of extremism and radicalisation at it’s early stages.

But whilst waiting for education to filter through to schools and training to be delivered to schools on an ever changing and adapting problem, what can be done to strengthen the prevent strategy in a school.

Report and Record.

Providing pupils with a voice and a safe and secure way to report worries or concern’s directly to a school is the most important short-term measure that should be taken within a school. If not a face-to-face reporting route, a technological solution in which students can speak up, is vital in flushing out and raising awareness of incidents as and when they occur. Although students may not understand what extremism or radicalisation truly is, they certainly are at the forefront of these incidents whether they know it or not. By encouraging students to speak about what they see and hear in the community and at school, this may lead to a disclosure, which not only raises awareness but also can save lives.

Having a system in place in which teaching staff and non-teaching staff are able to report and record incidents, as and when they happen, is vital to ensure that any face-to-face disclosures from students can then be evidenced and monitored. Something as simple as a student sharing a personal video or talking about extremist activity in a class, if picked up and recorded by a member of staff, major incidents can be prevented from escalating immediately. Having a reporting system in place also ensures that you are meeting the requirements of Ofsted as part of the prevent agenda.

Sharing best practise within schools and amongst other schools within the community is key in the fight against extremism and radicalisation. Best practise currently being used in over 500 schools across the UK provide pupils with a technological reporting and evidencing platform and app, is through the introduction of tootoot.

www.tootoot.co.uk is a free resource and is the first safeguarding platform that provides your pupils with a safe voice to report incidents and worries directly to your school. Tootoot also allows your staff to record incidents off extremism, radicalisation and many other safeguarding incidents whilst providing SLT with a live dashboard of reports and disclosures as evidence for Ofsted.

To date over 98,000 pupils are protected by tootoot in schools across the UK. Find out more

The Internet brings marvellous opportunities to children and young people with the ability to learn new skills and visit websites which engage and enrich their lives. However, the Internet also brings dangers such as online predators, who will try and contact children through websites and software apps.

More recently, there has been an increase in groups and individuals trying to approach young people to recruit them for political or religious ideas. This is known as online radicalisation and can be described as;

“The actions of an individual or group who use the Internet and digital technology to groom a young person into following their extremist ideas.”

There have been cases in the news over the past year of groups like Islamic State (ISIS) using the Internet and social media to recruit young people to fight in the conflict in Syria. In addition, there are examples of right wing groups such as Britain First and the English Defence League using Facebook and Twitter to engage with internet users.

On 1st July 2015, the Department for Education released their ‘Departmental advice for schools and childcare providers’ in the PREVENT Duty. This guidance was issued to help childcare providers understand the implications of the PREVENT Duty and to help schools identify how they can protect young people from risk.

In short, all schools have a duty under the Counter Terrorism And Security Act to keep children safe from harm, especially from the risks of radicalisation and extremism.

It will come as no surprise that schools many have been left wondering where they will find the resources (both in terms of time and money) required to implement these additional requirements. The demand for information comes as no surprise to the team here at www.e-safetysupport.com. On the day we released our anti-radicalisation checklist for schools, we saw an incredible demand for the information - our website traffic was 600% greater than average, and over 10% of our members visited the site within 6 hours of the information being released.

Due to this unprecedented demand, we have developed a school extremism and anti-radicalisation policy. The model policy can be used as a template and adapted as appropriate for your specific school needs.

This policy is available exclusively to E-safety Support Premium Plus Members.

Anti-Radicalisation Checklist

Don't forget to login and download your anti-radicalisation checklist for schools.

This checklist will help identify the key elements your school should have in place. It is available to all E-safety Support members.

To download the checklist, log into your E-safety Support account and go the 'Guidance' section of your dashboard.

More extremism and anti-radicalisation resources will be added soon - find out more.