Mobile and Online Technology Safety Policy
Rationale
The law has recognised that there is no longer a clear boundary between behaviour within a school and the external behaviour of its students. Unpleasant messages or images may be sent outside school time. Naturally we would expect parents to play the main role in dealing with any out-of school incidents. ‘If there is clear link between behaviour at school and inappropriate behaviour when students are not on the school premises (and not under the charge of a member of school staff) we reserve the right to take such action as is reasonable with a view to regulating conduct.’ This may involve a ban on bringing a mobile phone onto school premises or a search through a student's phone by Police where a student is reasonably suspected of involvement in an incident of cyber-bullying.
This policy has been written with regard to DCSF ‘Safe to Learn: Embedding anti-bullying work in schools’, DCSF ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children 2010’, chapter 12 of Leicestershire LSCB ‘Emerging Digital and Mobile Technologies and Child Abuse’, Independent Schools’ Inspectorate regulation 58 and the National Minimum Standards for Boarding, Standard 2.
Safe and acceptable usage of mobile and online technologies
Safe and acceptable usage of the internet and any other electronic and digital services to which students have access (including boarders), whether or not provided by the School, is that which leads to positive outcomes in a student’s personal, social or academic development and which does not cause any offence or harm to others. This may include, but is not limited to, the use of mobile phones, wireless enabled laptops, PDA’s, palmtops and games consoles.
Guidelines for the safe and acceptable usage of mobile and online technologies for staff are contained within the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy.
The guidance for parents and students set out in the policy is adapted from Let's Fight it Together, an anti-bullying package produced in 2007 by the DCSF and Childnet International.
Key Online Safety Advice for Students and Parents
How to keep safe online and prevent cyber-bullying: advice to students
• Remember that anything you place on technology (examples listed above), can be made public within seconds. You have very little control over this. Nothing is guaranteed to stay private. Whatever you send to others can travel world-wide and could stay on-line forever. University admissions officers and future employers may be able to view messages, films and photos posted years before.
• Be careful what you say on-line or in text messages. It is easy to upset someone by not reading carefully what you have written before pressing the SEND key. Be careful what images you send.
• If you receive a nasty or rude message about someone, or a photo of them, do not forward it to anyone. Doing this means that you will be taking part in the bullying. You could even be breaking the law.
• Keep your password to yourself. Do not let anyone see you key it in. Do not let anyone know it or use it. Change your password regularly. Choose hard-to-guess passwords with symbols or numbers. This makes it harder for others to hack into your account.
• Only give your mobile number or personal website address to loyal friends whom you trust completely. Remember also that some people change friends often, especially in the early teenage years.
• Choose the highest security settings on internet sites; do not rely on default settings. • Use websites and services that let you block someone who is behaving badly or bullying you, and use the blocking facility.
• Use websites and services which allow you to report someone who is bullying.
• If you see cyber-bulling taking place, support the victim. Report the bully. Bullies get away with bad behaviour if no one tells.
How to respond if you are bullied: advice to students
• Do not reply to bullying messages.
• Do not retaliate by sending unpleasant messages back.
• Use the blocking and reporting facilities of the website.
• If necessary, change your contact details such as your instant messaging identity or your mobile number.
• Save the evidence. Keep copies, records and dates of offending messages, pictures and on-line conversations. Refer to the BBB Locked section of www.websafecrackerz.com to learn how to do this. Evidence will be needed by school, internet service providers and mobile phone companies. If the cyber-bullying breaks the law, the evidence may be needed by the police for an investigation.
Note that internet service providers will remove text or photos only if they break the law or the company's own terms and conditions.
• To get help:-
• tell a parent, teacher or adult you trust
• call a helpline like Childline on 0800 11 11
• check the provider's website to see how to report incidents
• ask your school for support and advice
If the cyber-bullying breaks the law, your parents may decide to contact the police.
Cyber-bullying
Cyber-bullying is the use of information and communication devices and services to bully, harass or intimidate an individual or group, for example:
The following technology may be involved:-
• Mobile phones Email Instant Messenger
• Chatrooms and message boards
• Webcams Social networking sites
• Virtual worlds
• Video hosting sites
• Gaming sites and consoles
• Virtual learning environments
The school regards incidents of cyber-bullying as it does bullying in any other form and the school’s Anti-bullying Policy will be applied in the same way.
Sanctions
Students found to be involved in cyber-bullying are likely to receive disciplinary sanctions. These sanctions must be applied fairly, proportionally, consistently and reasonably, taking account of any special educational needs (SEN) or disabilities that students may have and taking into consideration the needs of vulnerable children.
The disciplinary sanctions have three main purposes, namely to:
• impress on the perpetrator that what he/she has done is unacceptable;
• deter him/her from repeating that behaviour;
• signal to other students that the behaviour is unacceptable and deter them from doing it.
The procedure is as follows:
First offence Discussion of the incident with parents and strategies put in place to help change the student’s behaviour, which may include being prevented from bringing mobile technologies into school or confiscation of electronic items or removal of privileges for boarders.
Student is placed in a Saturday detention.
Second offence As ‘First Offence’ with possible extended length of detention or suspension.
Parents invited in to discuss the matter and to suggest additional strategies and sources of help for the student.
Subsequent offences Student suspended from school, generally for two days.
Letter home to parents, stating that on return to school the student will be monitored for an agreed period, and that any further infringement may lead to exclusion from the school with a loss of fees already paid.
In conjunction with disciplinary sanctions, there are a range of other strategies that can be used to combat cyber-bullying. These include:
• Engaging with parents promptly when issues of cyber-bullying come to light
• Development of roles that students can play such as the trained Student Listeners
• School Counsellor
• Restorative justice approaches which hold students to account for their behaviour and engage with them to agree actions to be taken to repair the harm caused
Implementation and Procedures
The following procedures with regard to misuse of mobile and online technologies including cyber-bullying must be followed:
Reporting, Investigating and Managing Incidents
Reporting Misuse or Cyber-bullying
1. Staff to whom an incident is reported, or who first discover an incident, must:
o stay calm and avoid making snap decisions or attaching blame;
o make the situation safe, if necessary;
o report the matter to the Head of Year / Resident Senior Housemaster/Housemistress / Head of Junior School / Head of Nursery School (as appropriate) in the first instance.
2) Staff must write, sign and date an E-Incident Log Sheet (see appendix 1) of any incident as soon as possible after reporting it. These can be found in the Staff Common Room and on the staff shared area/anti-bullying/forms. Copies must be given to the Head of Year / Housemaster/Housemistress / Head of Junior School / Head of Nursery School (as appropriate) and to the Head of Boarding and Second Deputy Head.
3) It is vitally important that all written records of incidents are stored appropriately by the relevant member of staff. This is usually the Head of Year / Housemaster/Housemistress / Head of Junior School / Head of Nursery School (as appropriate), but records of more serious incidents are kept by the Head of Boarding and Second Deputy Head and/or the Headmaster.
Investigating and Managing Incidents
• Investigating staff should follow the procedure in the E-Safety Incident of Concern flow chart (see appendix 2) having completed an E-incident Log Sheet (appendix 1)
• Heads of Year / Housemaster/Housemistress / Head of Junior School / Head of Nursery School (as appropriate) take responsibility for initial investigations of any reported incidents;
• students are interviewed in order to ascertain what happened;
• written statements may be required from all parties involved, signed and dated;
• if it is decided that further action is required then the Second Deputy Head is informed;
• the students involved (both bully and bullied) may be brought together with a member of staff present to try to talk it through, with the aim of apology and reconciliation, if this is appropriate;
• clear guidelines for future behaviour are issued to both parties and a code of conduct agreed. Students should know that the situation will be monitored and know of consequences for the bully if bullying continues. The sanctions which might be applied are set out below and in the Behaviour, Rewards and Sanctions Policy;
• parents of bully and bullied should be kept informed, where necessary, at appropriate times during an investigation;
• Form Tutors / Class Teachers, Heads of Year / Housemaster/Housemistress / Head of Junior School / Head of Nursery School (as appropriate) monitor the situation;
• if no improvement is seen then the Second Deputy Head implements further sanctions;
• a student who persistently makes life unhappy for others may face suspension from School or being asked to leave the school in extreme cases.
Staff Professional Development
o Through appropriate continuing professional development (CPD) training and induction, all staff are made aware of the school’s anti-bullying policy, including new staff and support staff.
o Teaching staff, ancillary staff, prefects and monitors contribute to a suitably deployed supervisory presence around the School.
o All staff are asked to be vigilant and to be willing to take appropriate action if they suspect that a student is being bullied.
Preventative Strategies
o Effective school leadership that promotes an open and honest anti-bullying ethos.
o Opportunities to reinforce the values of the School’s Mission Statement are taken through School and year assemblies, tutor time, and night prayer for boarders.
o The PSHCE programme covers the topic of bullying.
o Using Anti-Bullying week in November to raise awareness of the negative consequences of cyber-bullying.
o Appropriate opportunities are taken within the curriculum to consider issues relating to bullying such as drama, stories, literature, historical events, current affairs etc.
o Incidents of cyber-bullying are reflected upon and discussed when they occur so that lessons can be learned.
o Information for students about what to do if they are experiencing cyber-bulling is displayed around the School, including telephone numbers for the School Counsellor and other organisations that can help (See Appendix 3).
o Ensuring that staff duties are carried out effectively each day at the appropriate times and locations around the school campus and that staff are vigilant by monitoring the use of computers, mobile phones and the internet in School.
Boarders
This policy applies equally to the School’s boarding community. However, additional procedures are set out below with regard to National Minimum Standard 2 to ensure safe and acceptable use of the internet and other electronic and digital services in the boarding community.
• All boarders are made aware of the policy and how to protect themselves from potential harm through whole school assemblies, boarding meetings and the curriculum.
• All boarders have access to clear information and guidance about how to be safe in the digital environment, which is displayed in common areas of the boarding houses and the School computer rooms.
• All boarders are clear about what they are and are not allowed to do and how they may report instances of cyber-bullying or inappropriate use of technologies, abuse and suspicious behaviour by other boarders, staff, volunteers or those outside School.
• Staff are vigilant and aware of their responsibilities towards upholding the Mobile and Online Technology Policy by discreetly monitoring the use of the internet during those times when students are permitted to use school computers and at other times where boarders are using mobile and online technologies.
• The boarding staff take reasonable steps to control and monitor the use of the internet and other electronic means of communication without unnecessarily or disproportionally compromising the privacy of boarders or their ability to communicate with parents/guardians or outside agencies as established in National Minimum Standard 19 and set out in the Boarding Parents’ Information Handbook.
• Boarding staff reserve the right to have students’ computers and other electrical items checked to ensure that they are being used appropriately.
Monitoring and Support for the Victim and the Bully
Once a student has been disciplined for cyber-bullying they will be monitored on a daily and weekly basis by their tutor and Head of Year or Housemaster/Housemistress for an agreed period of time. Where appropriate subject staff will be notified of the cyber-bullying in order to monitor behaviour in class. In order to check that the cyber-bullying has stopped and that the student(s) being bullied feel safe again, the tutor or Head of Year or Housemaster/Housemistress may undertake a review at the end of the term or half term. This would normally take the form of a simple discussion with those involved and their parents. If the response indicates the cyber-bullying has not stopped or the student does not feel safe, then this would lead to further discussions or actions.
Review
The Mobile and Online Technology Safety Policy is monitored by the Second Deputy Head through liaison with the Head of Junior School, who evaluate the effectiveness of the policy in the Junior School.
In the Senior School, the Second Deputy Head monitors the policy through discussions with key post holders through the E-Safety Team, Pastoral Meeting and the Heads of Department meeting, and discussions with students, in addition to checking the records of incidents which are reported and through feedback from parents if appropriate. The Governors will (evaluate and review) the policy, and will ensure that it is non-discriminatory.
The Second Deputy Head will ensure that staff receive regular training updates.
Links to Other Policies
Boarding Policy
Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy
Pastoral Care Policy
Behaviour, Rewards and Sanctions Policy
School Development Plan
Staff Development Plan
IT Acceptable-use Policies
Further Information
A simplified version of this policy is made available for all students, in appropriate formats, throughout the school, on printed sheets and in Information Handbooks. Parents are informed of the policy through the Parents’ Information Handbooks.
Review
The Mobile and Online Technology Safety Policy is reviewed annually by the Second Deputy Head in the summer term. This policy was last reviewed in January 2011.
