Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
UKCCIS published the first UK child Internet safety strategy in December 2009
(UKCCIS 2009). In order to increase awareness of how to keep safe online, UKCCIS
advocated following the 'Click Clever, Click Safe Code', with three simple things to
remember to help keep learners safe when online - Zip It, Block It, Flag It. This marked
the UK's seminal launch of a national digital code to promote e-safety. It followed the
2008 Byron Review, which made a series of recommendations to improve the way
learners interact digitally and called for teachers and other practitioners to strengthen
the knowledge base about how children and young people use digital technologies.
Following the first Byron Review of 2008, it was recommended that 100 per cent
of schools should have 'Acceptable Use Policies', which are regularly reviewed, moni-
tored and agreed with parents and pupils, and that all schools and local children's
services use an accredited filtering service (Byron 2008: 9). Ofsted's National Adviser
for ICT, David Brown, in an interview to mark 'Safer Internet Day' on 7 February
2012, stressed that the 'most effective schools made e-safety a priority in the cur-
riculum, in staff training, in support for pupils and in raising awareness with parents'
(Ofsted 2012: 1).
The process of developing e-safety policies began in 2007 when the UK Labour
Government commissioned a review by Byron of the risks posed by the Internet. Fol-
lowing the publication of the review in 2008, Ofsted was then tasked to evaluate the
extent to which schools teach pupils to adopt safe and responsible practices in using
technologies (Ofsted 2010). The need for e-safety arises because, while the Internet
offers multiple opportunities, the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies, such as social
networking, online gaming, instant messaging and photo sharing, leads to 'new and
serious risks' as observed by EPICT (European Pedagogical ICT Licence). The risks
identified vary from browsing inappropriate websites, anti-social behaviour and bul-
lying to releasing private and personal information to unsecured sources.
The Byron Review (2008: 56) highlights 'risk taking' by pupils. Byron reports that
'in Europe, 51% of teenagers use the Internet without supervision from their parents
and in the UK, 23% of parents with children under 11 allow their children to access the
Internet without supervision at home' (Byron 2010: 10). Children reveal their identity
to others far more easily than their parents realize (Livingstone and Bober 2005; Valcke
et al. 2006). The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP 2007), set up to
coordinate the central collection of cases for Internet-related abuse in the UK, reported
that, while 49 per cent of young people surveyed have given out personal information,
such as their full name, age, email address, phone number, hobbies or name of their
school, to someone that they met on the Internet, by contrast only 5 per cent of parents
thought their child has given out such information (Livingstone and Bober 2005: 22).
Particular issues addressed by e-safety policies include the apparent ease by which
some children will give out personal information, the facility for pupils to communicate
without censorship and in private, alongside cyber-bullying of some children towards
others and the actions of predatory adults, which can lead to pupils being at risk.
Consequently, ensuring e-safety is seen to be an important element of the use
of technology across the curriculum and also the discrete teaching of technology in
secondary education (Woollard 2007: 16-17). The 2008 Byron Review concluded that
'explicit teaching' of e-safety was necessary at all ages. To this end, Byron provided
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