June 2009 - Posts
Childnet International are currently running the Youth IGF
Project to capture the voice of children and young people to take to the
Internet Governance Forum (IGF) a UN mandated meeting in the Autumn. The IGF is
a four day international gathering that gives governments, the internet
industry, organisations and individuals the space to debate what should happen
to the Internet in the coming years thinking specifically about Access,
Openness, Diversity and Security.
Historically the IGF has had little or no input from young people. Childnet's
Youth IGF Project aims to capture the voice of young people so that they can be
represented at the forum in November. To reach the widest possible audience in
a short space of time, Childnet have created Primary and Secondary project packs for schools who want to get
involved in the project and would welcome as wide participation as possible. They have also created a film to support the
secondary lessons. This can be viewed
and downloaded from our Youth IGF Project YouTube channel (
http://www.youtube.com/YouthIGFProject
)
All schools returning survey material will be entered into a free prize draw
for a free e-safety session to be held in January 2010. Youth responses that
particularly stand out will be featured in a video to be presented in Egypt
and young people may also be asked to consider contributing to discussions in
Parliament on this topic.
The project packs contain lesson plans and instructions for
running lessons - and are a perfect afternoon activity in the run-up to the end
of term.
We hope that many Schools will engage in this project and
Ellen (ellen@childnet.com) and Lucinda (lucinda@childnet.com ) in the Childnet
office or the e-Safety officer (esafetyofficer@kent.gov.uk)
will be happy to answer any further questions.
The Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety (
CHIS) has launched its "Digital
Manifesto", which it is sending to all the political parties represented
in the Westminster Parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales. The manifesto asks the
parties to commit themselves to supporting the policies and recommendations
which the children's charities have made in the document and indicates that
details of all responses received will be published.
The document contains many insightful ideas which make recommendations for
government around issues such as child abuse images, policies, the use of
mobile internet technologies, social networking, support for professionals and
ideas for future developments. The manifesto was written by John Carr, from UKCCIS and the Sectary of CHIS and
Dr Zoe Hilton, Policy advisor on Child Protection for the NSPCC. It strongly
supports the recommendations made in 2008 Byron Review such as "Reducing availability,
"Restricting access" and "Increasing Resilience"
To view the manifesto itself, and other CHIS documents/consultations view here
The EU Kids Online Final report (Sonia Livingstone and
Leslie Haddon) has been released. The
report offers a balanced picture of issues in e-safety and promoting online
opportunity for young people across Europe.
The EU Kids Online project (2006-2009) examines European
research on cultural, contextual and risk issues in children's safe use of the
internet and new media across 21 countries. It is funded by Safer
Internet plus Programme).
You can find the final report here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/EUKidsOnline/
The site also includes second editions of What
do we know about Children's Use of Online Technologies? A
Report on Data Availability and Research Gaps in Europe and Comparing
Children's Online Opportunities and Risks across Europe: Cross-national
Comparisons for EU Kids Online
On 12 March, Lord Laming published his report T
he Protection of Children
in England: A
Progress Report. The Government accepted all of his recommendations and has now
published an action plan, setting out its detailed response.
Schools should be aware of Ofsted's response to both Lord Laming's
inquiry and to Sir Roger Singleton's report Keeping Our Children Safe, a review
of safeguarding arrangements in independent schools, non-maintained special
schools and boarding schools in England.
The Laming inquiry made recommendations that have direct implications for
Ofsted: "Recommendation 10: Ofsted should revise the inspection and improvement
regime for schools giving greater prominence to how well schools are fulfilling
their responsibilities for child protection"
As a result of this Ofsted have accepted the recommendation and will be
making revisions to their inspection framework for schools. The new school
inspection framework which will apply from September 2009 will have a stronger focus on safeguarding.
The current inspection framework already includes a judgement about whether
safeguarding arrangements in schools are satisfactory but this will be
strengthened in the new framework with a grading on a scale from 1(outstanding)
to 4(inadequate) for a school's safeguarding arrangements.
Ofsted have also designed that any school which receives a grade of 4
will be likely to be awarded an inadequate grade for its overall performance and
will need therefore to make urgent improvements. These arrangements will
hopefully 'raise the bar' about the importance of safeguarding in schools and
will also facilitate the identification and dissemination of best
practice.
The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has written to
schools to highlight the importance of this action plan and of the role that
teachers and other staff have in keeping children safe from abuse but it is important that all schools are aware that e-Safety is considered under
the Safeguarding umbrella and therefore schools must have policies and
procedures in place to ensure they are able to meet the aims of the new framework when it is
released. More information will be posted as soon as the new framework is released
To read the full response from Ofsted click here
For more advice and information click here