Online safety or e-safety is always going to be a hot topic and tends to focus mainly on the child. But we shouldn’t forget that there is a profession which is always in the firing line when it comes to harassment, defamation or cyberbullying, threats and abuse – the teacher (not forgetting school support staff).
The NASUWT reports that over 4 in ten teachers have been affected by such abuse by both the pupils and their parents; it reinforces the fact that we should all be ever mindful of our online activities. What do I mean by that? For some there is still the blur between online and offline activity, for others there is no blur. Would you accept such abuse in the real (offline) world? But more importantly what does your school do to protect the teaching or support staff member that is being abused?
UK law and its application on the internet is still quite a grey area as far as I’m concerned. Let me rephrase that – there are laws that can protect you but these laws need to be enforced in a school context in order for baselines to be set. For example you have the Protection from Harassment Act 1997; the Public Order Act 1994; the Malicious Communications Act 1988 to name a few.
What I find most worrying about the NASUWT findings is that a large number of staff feel unsupported in this area, not only by their own school leadership but also by the Department for Education. I can’t comment for others but from personal experience I would tend to agree.
What can we do about this? Well, we can ask the Government to set clear policy guidelines so that all schools can support all their staff in a nationally standardised way. The DfE may well argue that those guidelines are already in place using the Education Act and the other Acts previously mentioned. But I don’t think that helps schools.
So, I’m going to try and write a guide to help school leaders empower their staff, and for this I need your help as I have been out of school for too long. I’ll make this freely available to all schools and I already have some ideas around a flowchart and guidelines. What would you like to see in this guide, what personal experience do you have, do you feel supported/unsupported and if so how, have you had to deal with such issues yourself?
Do you think such a guide would be worthwhile? Does your school already have a policy and has it been tested?
You can leave a comment, drop me a tweet (@esafetyadviser) or write me an email (alan(at)esafety-adviser.com) with your thoughts and ideas. I’ll keep everything anonymous or credit you, your choice.
Let’s start looking at the other angle of online safety and e-safety – the safety of the adult!