Pembrokeshire putting school e-safety first

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

For local authorities, raising e-safety standards is paramount, says Alona Jones, ICT adviser at Pembrokeshire County Council

Pembrokeshire has 75 schools serving more than 10,150 primary age pupils and 8,500 secondary pupils – and the safety and welfare of these children and young people is of course a key priority. E-safety is an issue of growing concern and, in close partnership with the schools under our remit, we embarked on an ambitious programme to manage the associated risks more effectively.

The council pioneered a multi-agency approach to e-safety by joining forces with Dyfed Powys Police, Pembrokeshire children's services and the NHS to form an internet safety working group.

We identified the issues to help ensure the appropriate, effective and safe use of technology.

In today's educational environment, learning technologies are developing at an enormous rate.

On top of this, when it comes to mastering technology, students can be leaps and bounds ahead of the teachers. Unquestionably, this digital generation boasts a highly skilled set of young people who are technologically savvy, and this presents a further challenge for local authorities and schools.

It is important that young people are encouraged to embrace the opportunities that emerging technologies offer. Therefore, rather than restricting access, the safe usage of technology is promoted.

We are eager to minimise the risks so that children and young people benefit from a positive and rewarding technology experience.

Pembrokeshire's schools had problems determining what activities students were undertaking, whether online in internet chatrooms, or while working on computers offline in applications such as Microsoft Word. If students were engaging in inappropriate activities, such as accessing game websites during class time, teachers were not able to collate hard evidence to tackle the situation. And yet this was clearly necessary to help teachers illustrate when, where and which users were in breach of the rules.

Our schools had limited knowledge of what students were doing online, while the monitoring of offline usage was non-existent – a wider view of student activity was vital.

To help Pembrokeshire achieve e-safety excellence, we approached Securus, a computer monitoring solutions provider. The first step was a pilot scheme across a selection of schools. Pembroke School, the largest school in the county, was one of those selected. It is a mixed 11–18 comprehensive with 1,500 pupils and a sixth form of 200. The school is also advanced in terms of ICT and has some 500 computers.

The pilot project in Pembroke School proved a great success. We experienced a marked improvement in student behaviour in terms of online and offline activity and were alerted to any violations as and when they occurred. Consequently, implementation of this solution was rolled out across all our secondary schools.

These schools are now able to monitor computer networks for inappropriate language, access to unsuitable internet sites, and unacceptable personal use of computers during lessons.

Furthermore, schools are also notified of other potentially harmful situations such as signs of depression or suicide, predator grooming, sexual, racial or religious harassment, drugs, pornography or gambling – sadly all of which can be an issue.

Evidence of such occurrences is captured to help assist the schools tackle the situation appropriately.

For instance, we receive screenshots that illustrate what was on the screen at the time, together with the user identity, date and time.

Technology offers a wealth of opportunities and is exciting for young people, so our aim is to promote and encourage its use while educating students and parents on the potential dangers.

Through implementing an e-safety system, Pembrokeshire can now help to protect young people when using technology. We have educated our young people about the dangers in a fun way, which helps equip them to deal with any situation that may arise.

It will never be possible to remove all dangers, but we have proved measures can be implemented to lessen the impact of those risks.

Our approach is not doom and gloom about the dangers of the internet. We promote the positive side of technology and encourage students to embrace the benefits.

Computer monitoring is part of our plan to tackle the dangers of online activity, and we hope to refine and develop our approach over time. We are now considering rolling the solution out across our primary schools.