This report focuses on the importance of frontline services which directly support families: schools.
Most children in England spend more than 30 hours at school per week. Some families look to teachers as a source of support in many aspects of life, educational and noneducational – including online life.
Educators often felt that they had too reactive an approach to tackling online safety issues, based around addressing issues with students as they arose. This raised concerns for teachers, who felt they were constantly on the back foot and found it difficult to give online safety the time it needed to be able to pre-empt issues. A lack of knowledge of online platforms and actions of students also exacerbated this problem for teachers.
Some teachers stated that they felt comfortable teaching online safety, but they felt less equipped to deal with pastoral issues when they arose. This could be due to uncertainty around what issues fell within the school remit and how to discuss topics such as sexual or violent content in an age-appropriate manner.
Additionally, the constant change within the social media landscape could make it hard to keep up to date. This, combined with the unique nature of most cases, made it difficult to establish school-wide policies to guide their approach.
A large proportion of those that used resources directly with smaller groups of students, used the materials more often − on a termly rather than an annual basis − when compared to their use in classes. This might be attributed to the reactive nature of online safety provision, where pastoral issues experienced by students’ prompt more targeted discussions.
The overall quality of current resources was rated as average. This lack of a clear positive response indicates that teachers felt there was room for improvement regarding the quality of resources available to them.
See findings on what teachers find most valuable and how to ensure effective resource distribution in the full report.
Free online safety learning platform: Digital Matters