I greatly appreciate Nick giving up his own time over Easter weekend to meet with me to discuss Internet safety issues in Scottish schools. Present, too, was Joan Fraser, an Australian teacher working near Edinburgh at that time, and able to add the view of a classroom teacher.
Nick began by noting that David Copeland of the New Zealand Ministry of Education had been visiting Edinburgh only the week before.
Nick said that the European Union funding which is available in the UK is not distributed equally; the Universities receive a hundred percent funding for projects to do with Internet safety whilst other sectors receive only a proportion of the funding required. He also said there was often poor dissemination of the information gained through university research; little goes out to the rest of society.
Government funding to address the Internet Safety issue is intermittent but has been important, not least for giving the political message that the issue matters. Of some of the well-intentioned recent government initiatives in this area of Internet safety education, Nick noted that they were of a limited time span, and had not been particularly successful in getting through to parents. He now feels there is a risk of "been there, done that" thinking which could mean that in future this area may not be a priority for government funding.
In Scotland, schools are advised that Internet safety is important but there is no focus that it should be made a top priority. Of relevance to what degree of emphasis is placed on issues associated with Internet safety, is the fact that school inspectors have often lacked knowledge and skills in this area. This reinforces the view that over-worked school Principals could well place Internet safety in the "it would be nice if we could do this" box, instead of the "must do" box.
Although British schools now have more computers and 'broadband' quality access will be there in the next few years, training programmes often do not include the element of safety information and education! This is a potentially serious situation.
In Scotland there was a start made towards taking the initiative, when in 1998 the Scottish Executive got together a working party and produced advice for
Schools and local authorities. ("Clickthinking" 1999).
http://www.ngflscotland.gov.uk/ngflfocus/safety/clickthinking/
However, the group did not include parents and other sectors of the community; it was education people, social workers and police. The launch at an Edinburgh primary school attracted some media interest.
The Scottish Executive put the Clickthinking safety information packs into all schools in Scotland, both state and independent sectors, and Nick believes this had successful outcomes. This pack goes to the ICT Co-ordinator, giving technology information, with training material for teachers and some content aimed at pupils (probably the least successful part). The Head Teacher is encouraged to view it as a whole-school resource, not something just for the Computing staff.
However, there is no follow-up. The inspectors, who would be the best ones to be in a position to check what is going on, carry out only infrequent inspections. And that inspection is also a sampling exercise and may miss problems of practice.
Nick stated that there is a great deal of variety within local authorities as to how Internet issues are dealt with. Nick thought the Head Teachers would most likely not support the idea of having an Internet Safety Officer in each school; it would be seen as extra workload and expense. In this climate of over-worked, over-stressed and under-paid teachers (a situation which is shared by New Zealand and many other countries), there is a feeling that government should not ask anything more of schools. There is however, some awareness of the need for a source of updated online advice.
Nick felt one weakness in the system is the amount of help and support which reaches classroom teachers. There has usually been some initial training given to teachers within a local authority but as this may go just to permanent staff and not part-timers or any new staff coming in, it has limited effect.
As well, it seems the teacher training colleges are generally assuming that training to do with Internet safety will be given in the schools, and do not necessarily cover it within their ICT tuition for student teachers. This does seem to be a waste of the opportunity to reach all new teachers coming into the education system.
Nick reported a new scheme to get ISP's to seek certification as an educational provider which delivers an effective degree of filtering. (The agency BECTa leads this scheme). Nick believes that many ISP's will not be interested in "jumping through hoops" to achieve certification as they may not believe that the educational market is worthwhile. Also, local authorities and schools may still just choose the cheapest ISP, not looking for one with this 'badge of approval'.
UK level initiatives, such as the Home Office Task Force on child pornography and the Internet Crime Forum, do not include significant representation from the education sector or from Scotland, and Nick considers that expectations of their eventual outcomes are not high.
Nick commented that John Carr and the NCH children's charity have contributed a great deal to the safety of the Internet for young people. Nick believes that the media focus on scare stories about paedophiles, the "Every chat room has a paedophile pervert" type of thing, leads to other relevant concerns being ignored. Examples are harassment, racist or hate material, junk mail, online fraud, etc. He believes it would be a mistake for the government to focus just on chatrooms - he said it is like the early AIDS public health advertising which was crude and simplistic. Nick also wonders what evaluation has been done of the effectiveness of public education programmes, as such information is not readily available to Internet safety practitioners.
Nick also noted that although there is a plethora of Internet safety sites, there is variation in the advice given. An example is that children's charities take a hard line of "If you go to a face-to-face meeting, take a parent", but he believes this is not in touch with reality of teenagers' lives. Other sites advise that children inform parents that they intend going to meet an online friend. There is need for research on what advice children and young people have seen/been given, and whether it has had a positive impact on their behaviour.
Sometimes there is money to produce websites but not to advertise and market them. This undermines their value and impact.
Nick believes that teenagers are often complacent about how to deal with any problems, and think they don't need advice, while younger children had sometimes been scared by heavy-handed advice from parents or media coverage.
The geographic nature of Scotland, with many small or remote communities, has meant different access arrangements and practice. Isolated schools and communities often make heavy use of the Internet. Cities offer many possible sites for young people to use the Internet and it has been noted that many use cyber cafes, where there is heavy use of chatrooms, and only a limited amount of filtering. But he believes the cyber cafes in general are afraid of customer complaints and legal action, and all have stopped allowing clients to download onto network folders or CDs. They are afraid of illegal material, pornography or copyright content being accessed, and them being blamed or even sued.
