E2BN Blog

From September 2016, the DfE's most recent changes to 'Keeping Children Safe in Education' will come into force.

Schools will now be required to "ensure that appropriate filtering and appropriate monitoring systems are in place. Children should not be able to access harmful or inappropriate material from the school or college's IT system." The document then goes on to say that schools will need to "be careful" that 'over-blocking' does not lead to unreasonable restrictions as to what children can be taught with regards to online teaching and safeguarding". 

The annual report from the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) published today contains their latest trends and statistics on online child sexual abuse imagery.

Here are a few headlines from the report:

• 417% increase in reports of child sexual abuse images and video since 2013.
• 941 web pages actioned in a single record breaking day. 68,092 confirmed as child sexual abuse URLs: 118% increase on 2014.
• 69% of victims assessed as 10 years or under.
• 121 internet industry Members working with us.
• Only 0.2% of the world’s known child sexual abuse imagery is hosted in the UK.

Please use the Report as a reference.

You can access the Report from https://www.iwf.org.uk/accountability/annual-reports/2015-annual-report

A guest blog from Alan McKenzie @esafety-adviser

You will be aware that Sept 15 has seen a renewed focus from Ofsted on safeguarding, including e-safety under the Common Inspection Framework.

Specifically, this is ‘inspecting safeguarding in early years, education and skills from Sept 2015.’ First and foremost this re-iterates the fact that e-safety is not a technology issue; from the perspective of a school it is primarily a safeguarding matter. Now when I say e-safety, Ofsted has changed e-safety to ‘online safety’ to reflect issues that go beyond the scope of safeguarding.

Similarly, the term cyber-bullying has been replaced with ‘online bullying’. There is no doubt that inspectors are much more focussed in regards to e-safety. Going back a couple of years you wouldn’t see many references to e-safety within Ofsted reports, but now it is becoming increasingly common, not just in schools but in other settings such as childminders.

A recent survey by Action for Children has revealed that one in seven children admit to online bullying and that 40% said that they did so to prevent themselves being targeted.

What can schools do reduce online bullying?

In addition, to having robust Safeguarding policies about online bullying every school should be educating pupils about online bullying, its impact and what they can do to prevent it. But developing you own engaging, interactive programme is time-consuming, so E2BN has created a partnership with eCadets that entitles every E2BN school to one full year’s free subscription to the eCadets multi-award winning, peer-led online safety programme.