[news] Groomed in lesson while on Ipad

[Garacesh]

No you are the idiot. The school and parents are totally to blame. If this child has not been taught the dangers by the school and parents, and if both also are not monitoring her internet activates in any way to notice these activates then she is the innocent party. As for safeguarding it would seem that it's not just her school that is lacking as the comments on here surely reflect a lack of training across a large number of schools!

 

Please. Get off your high horse.

 

I was taught the dangers of Alcohol. I still drank at 15. I was taught about sex and relationships. I lost my virginity at 15 (not actually related to alcohol, for the record)

I had been taught these things. I wilfully chose to ignore them. That's what teenagers do. They're often reckless and make decisions us adults would consider wrong, stupid, etc. But that doesn't mean they're not to blame just because they're teenagers, does it?

 

This girl is not, in any way, shape, or form, being told to shoulder all of the blame. We are not saying that the school aren't to blame. We are not saying the parents aren't to blame. We are not saying the bloke involved is not to blame. I am simply saying that she is not entirely innocent either, and regardless of what the law says, I personally hold her morally responsible. Teenagers aren't idiots. She knew what she was doing. She likely knew that what he was doing was illegal but she still went ahead with it anyway. Maybe that's because by this point she'd been 'groomed' and was experiencing something akin to stockholm syndrome/etc so she felt that it was ok, or maybe she just liked the thrill of flirting with an older man. I can't say, none of us can. But she is certainly not innocent just by the virtue of being 15.

[localzuk]

And the law disagrees with you @Garacesh. The law that is based on quite a number of years worth of cases and experiences.

[Garacesh]

And the law disagrees with you @Garacesh. The law that is based on quite a number of years worth of cases and experiences.

 

The law can disagree with me all it wants. I'm not arguing legal grounds. I'm arguing moral ones. I feel I've made that clear already.

[X-13]

No you are the idiot. The school and parents are totally to blame.

 

Because secondary school age pupils NEVER do anything illegal, immoral or malicious of their own accord.

 

I'll bare that in mind the next time a pupil goes on a rampage, and I'll pass on your comments to the families terrorised by yobs.

 

 

We teach pupils to take responsibility for their actions. By 10/11 they're deemed to know right from wrong to such an extent that they can be held criminally responsible. By 14 the assumption that they didn't know any better is reversed, you have to prove they weren't aware that what they were doing was wrong.

 

And the law disagrees with you @Garacesh. The law that is based on quite a number of years worth of cases and experiences.

 

The law also said it was a punishable offence to be gay.

Edited January 19, 2015 by X-13

[tmcd35]

There at least four separate issues here. It's a knee jerk reaction to confuse them as one overiding issue and assign blame accordingly.

 

1) The behavior of the adult in question

2) The behavior of the child in question

3) Education provided to the child from parents and school on grooming and social networking issues

4) The school allowing access to skype/social media on a pupil device during lessons

 

In situations such as these there's enough blame to go around for everyone involved.

[win]

Skype should be on desktops only not student mobile devices - makes it easier for staff to monitor.

 

Glad i don't work for that school, IT staff there must be feeling some serious heat!

[Arreks]

There at least four separate issues here. It's a knee jerk reaction to confuse them as one overiding issue and assign blame accordingly.

 

1) The behavior of the adult in question

2) The behavior of the child in question

3) Education provided to the child from parents and school on grooming and social networking issues

4) The school allowing access to skype/social media on a pupil device during lessons

 

In situations such as these there's enough blame to go around for everyone involved.

 

You missed the 5th issue, it's a Daily Mail article!!

[pcstru]

It is sad once again to see language like "you are the idiot" being banded around by professionals discussing an issue that affects their profession and them professionally. Please, regardless of the subject, it is fine to make your point without unnecessary ad hominem rhetoric.

 

Regardless of anything else, a school has a duty of care to all it's students, and if a student is exchanging explicit images with anyone using schools equipment and infrastructure, then the school has quite obviously failed in that duty.

 

As a general point, a 15 year old would be considered to have some decision making capability should (say) the other party be prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Act. That would not stop a charge against the adult who was 'grooming' her, but may act as mitigation in any sentence. The Girl herself might fall foul of the Communication's Act for sending indecent images of herself and she could be prosecuted (the age of criminal responsibility is 10). When considering 'fault, (as in it is "her fault"), there does need to be some legislation to hang that on.

Edited January 19, 2015 by pcstru

[simpsonj]

If Skype had been blocked in that school, would she have not continued at home, where it may not have been picked up at all?

 

We're moving into a time where filtering and monitoring student devices is going to get harder as 3G/4G and now 5G is becoming more and more ubiquitous. We're being told that to keep students away from mobile devices isn't in keeping with a 21st century education, yet at the same time very little guidance is being given on student BYOD.

 

Education would definitely be an answer, but as @Ephelyon says, can we ever be sure that the education a student receives is taken in and acted upon?

 

My major concern would be that this is happening with a lot of teenagers, and no amount of school filtering/technical know how is going to help when it's the students own devices that are being used.

[Garacesh]

Education would definitely be an answer, but as @Ephelyon says, can we ever be sure that the education a student receives is taken in and acted upon?

 

My major concern would be that this is happening with a lot of teenagers, and no amount of school filtering/technical know how is going to help when it's the students own devices that are being used.

@Ephelyon has, as always, provided a great insight into discussions like this.

 

It's because of things like this that at our school we're a strict 'NO' to pupil BYOD, and we've provided staff with devices rather than connect theirs to our system, though we do have a 'public' (but still passworded and filtered) WiFi for visitors to use. Whilst things like this are still going on, I think there needs to remain a very clear distinction of our network and 'their' (the students) devices. That way, when a parent cries "Little Natasha was sending naughty photos to some guy at school!".. "Little Jacob was looking at porn in school!" etc we can say "Well it sure as hell wasn't on our network, and we have the filtering logs to prove it."

 

Teenagers will be teenagers. They will look for pornography and other 'banned' things because they are curious. They will be part of behaviour they're not allowed to (be it by house rules, school rules, or the law.) and in this increasing digital age it is becoming harder and harder to protect them and stop that from happening. Education only goes so far. Plenty of kids decide to go against what they've been taught and education is certainly not the fix-all solution some people would like to believe it is. Some kids want to rebel, others might feel the adults are being overly cautions. Some might just act out of character in a blaze of hormones. These things will happen. They have happened here and they will happen again in future.

 

Schools should strive to educate their pupils more on issues like this. Just today I've been making copies of DVD's aimed at kids and one of them was e-safety, another was alcohol. Parents should strive more to assure their children that they are safe at home and are able to discuss anything they may find makes them uncomfortable, however it's entirely possible (such as this case) that the affections of an older man clearly did not make her feel uncomfortable. Which is where education and the law should kick in, but teenagers often disregard this, too. I know I certainly did on many occasions. But this will never 'solve' the problem. My mother was extremely understanding and compassionate, I still acted out. One could argue that's to do with the frustration and anger I was experiencing from being bullied so severely and the school did nothing about it (except kick me out for 4 months prior to my GCSE's.. "Study leave" they called it..) but honestly, I just think it's teenagers being teenagers. When I was disobeying the law/my upbringing I knew that I was doing it. I didn't care (for lack of a better term). And I'd bet good money that this girl was feeling the same.

 

A lot of people put so much emphasis on 'grooming' as if these people are hypnotising our kids, but I don't strictly think that's true. Maybe sometimes, but not always. Young girls often enjoy the affections of an older male (and yes, some people do prey on that, and that, of course, is wrong) and this may very well be true of the reverse. There have been occasions where people I knew have actively sought this kind of thing - yes I'm aware this is anecdotal but it's still a valid point.

[abillybob]

I have kept quiet and lurked on this thread throughout the day these are my views and yes your welcome to challenge them but in a nutshell:

 

Things the School should have done

- Not ensuring their internet filters and firewalls prevented children from accessing social media sites (of which Skype is). If a school needs to use sykpe, like we do here to contact foreign countries, it should only be accessible to staff accounts, therefore only staff accounts can access these types of websites. I allow Twitter, FaceBook and Skype in school but only to staff, never pupil accounts for this reason.

- The IT bloke or gal should have been aware of the risks by allowing Skype and if he/she wasn't then the school should have ensured he/she was sufficiently trained in e-safety to understand it better and learn on ways to protect the children online.

- Spending that much money on iPads is silly but this is my opinion. Managing that many iPads HAS to be a struggle I know I wouldn't like to do that imagine that many iPads on an MDM console!!!! You better have a fiber link straight to Cisco's core internet switch otherwise you'll have no bandwidth left.

- The school should have had a policy in place that explains 1:1 deployment and the risks and that it is up to the parent to ensure their child isn't doing anything malicious on the devices when the child takes that device home.

- With the right implementation of a VPN network, correct filtering and proper mobile management the school COULD have prevented this so it's no excuse they didn't do their research before they invested time and money into these mobile devices.

 

Things the parents should have done

- Parents should take it on themselves to ensure their own childs protection online at home, services to protect them are now built in and widely marketed to a new broadband connection. The parent was at fault as they should have made sure they are monitoring their own childs internet use.

- If the parent did do all the relevant steps (steps of which I would include in a school policy to make sure the parents raised any concerns, but that is another school problem) the parent should have raised her own concerns with the school to ensure they are protecting her/his child.

 

Points of the child

- Children nowadays aren't thick they understand a lot of the e-safety concerns and problems you encounter online and the school should be properly educating them in this subject if they're not and they have a 1:1 deployment of iPads then this is the schools fault, if they are well then she should already know

- This guy was 20 not a 45 year old, the gap between ages is very small compared to a lot of other relationships today, she must have been interested to keep this up and probably bragged about it to her friends because her friends knew all about it. "I have an older boyfriend who has a car and stuffs" kind of attitude. People in relationships to sext and the like to each other. You could just state "That's the law and it's wrong because law" that's fine but at 18 I was in a relationship with a 16 Year Old girl, does that make me a Peadophile... Don't think so. Things like that everyone has their own opinions on, I personally am a bit more open minded and think it depends on age difference, maturity of the couple and the whole situation. I think each case should be considered individually and not on a your over 18 and she's 16 that means PEADOOOO kind go attitude.

- There was a documentary on Channel 4 about the 16 year old girl who was "abducted" by her teacher who was 21 (I think) and taken to France, the 16 year old openly admitted on camera she knew what she was doing and for months was being sexually seductive towards him to try and grab his attention. Don't under-estimate young girls they're not thick and know what they're doing. She could have been doing all of this as a bit of a laugh and a joke with her friends.

 

Overall there's too many variable in the situation. I don't think it was solely the schools fault or the parents or the girl in question. It was everybody's fault. I think the number 1 way to further prevent things like this happening is too educate parents, schools and the general public better in e-safety.

Edited January 19, 2015 by abillybob

[abillybob]

Again... how do we know they weren't already making all reasonable efforts?

 

I'm not saying I think they definitely were, just that there always seems to be this assumption that if a minor misbehaves, those responsible for them could have done more. Sometimes that's true... but then again, sometimes it isn't. We really don't know in this case. We also don't know what was going through the victim or the offender's minds. We really don't know very much about this case at all.

 

I'd like to challenge you on that statement. We KNOW the school could have done more by the points I've raised in my previous thread. A VPN connection and a proper MDM management suite to force the VPN on all iPads with proper filtering definitely would have prevented this and you do have to question a school that has 1000's of iPads and didn't implement this kind of infrastructure to their network... There are options available and they didn't do it.

 

This is not to say it couldn't have been prevented in other ways such as the parents doing a bit more in monitoring their child also of course. That's why I do think a lot of people are to blame here not just the school although I do think the school COULD and SHOULD of prevented this.

[Ephelyon]

That's correct on the technical side (though whether it was IT's negligence or SLT not authorising proper filtering or providing a budget for it, we don't know). I should have been more clear; I was referring to the education in these matters as provided by the school, as this is what others were saying must be at fault.

[X-13]

- The IT bloke or gal should have been aware of the risks by allowing Skype and if he/she wasn't then the school should have ensured he/she was sufficiently trained in e-safety to understand it better and learn on ways to protect the children online.

 

Point of contention. WE don't usually make that decision.

 

I can tell people that xyz should NOT be allowed because of whatever reason and be instantly overruled, rightly or wrongly, by a non-technical member of SLT with no concept of the potential issues.

[Joanne]

I think blame lies all around. Parents, school and the pupil. Parents for not monitoring internet access, school for not monitoring internet access / filtering issues then the pupil for lying about her age.

 

I've been on websites I shouldn't have been on when I was younger (Yahoo Chat) with webcams and stuff... as soon as I saw something awful I would click off it. I never had any esafety lessons, but I knew what was right and wrong. I never lied about my age online because I knew it was wrong to lie.

 

I'm sure there is hella more to this story than any of us know about though.

 

I said this on page 3..... #JustSaying

[Grey-gear]

Overall there's too many variable in the situation. I don't think it was solely the schools fault or the parents or the girl in question. It was everybody's fault.

 

Yes I do believe that all parties have some share of the blame for this but it is a good lesson for other people\schools to think what we can be doing to prevent this from happening in schools and\or at home. As Internet Safely day is just around the corner (Tuesday 10th February, http://www.saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/2015) highlighting to student\parents the dangers that the World Wide Web holds.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Grey-gear

[abillybob]

Point of contention. WE don't usually make that decision.

 

I can tell people that xyz should NOT be allowed because of whatever reason and be instantly overruled, rightly or wrongly, by a non-technical member of SLT with no concept of the potential issues.

 

Very true my bad. Though if that was the case then I think the head has rightfully took the blame because ultimately the decisions of purchases and everything else in the school is down to him. I do hope that for once the IT department can now have a big smile on their face and say "We told you so"

 

I said this on page 3..... #JustSaying

Haha I know I saw and I agree with you.

[Davit2005]

We don't know the full details we are just assuming, how do we know that the IT department did not raise concerns but either was not listened to or was told there was no budget for MDM etc.

 

How many times do we hear that BLAH have just plonked these on our desk and have asked for them to be put on the network and we do not get a say in the matter, whether it be 10 devices or 1000 this incident could of still happened.

[abillybob]

We don't know the full details we are just assuming, how do we know that the IT department did not raise concerns but either was not listened to or was told there was no budget for MDM etc.

 

I would like to point out that Meraki MDM is free to use and a VPN Server can be setup for free also (as long as you have a server lying around or virtual servers) The filtering I would expect EVERY school to have some kind of web filter if not then you're just asking for trouble, even if it's a county based filter, you can still call them up and request blocking of different websites for your school. That type of setup would be very inexpensive for the school to implement and I do have to question that if the IT bod explained all this to management why management would turn it down if it's not going to cost them a great deal. They spent 10's of thousands on iPads, I wouldn't have thought budgeting would have been a massive concern though even if it was, it's all pretty inexpensive anyway.

 

With that setup above the school WOULD have prevented this and the only reason I can think of logically why they wouldn't is because - Lazy or Inexperienced staff that didn't know these solutions existed.

[Davit2005]

I would like to point out that Meraki MDM is free to use and a VPN Server can be setup for free also (as long as you have a server lying around or virtual servers) The filtering I would expect EVERY school to have some kind of web filter if not then you're just asking for trouble, even if it's a county based filter, you can still call them up and request blocking of different websites for your school. That type of setup would be very inexpensive for the school to implement and I do have to question that if the IT bod explained all this to management why management would turn it down if it's not going to cost them a great deal. They spent 10's of thousands on iPads, I wouldn't have thought budgeting would have been a massive concern though even if it was, it's all pretty inexpensive anyway.

 

With that setup above the school WOULD have prevented this and the only reason I can think of logically why they wouldn't is because - Lazy or Inexperienced staff that didn't know these solutions existed.

 

I'm certainly not defending any ignorance or laziness.

[Garacesh]

I wonder if perhaps they did want to do something like that, but the parents/children may have taken issue with it. Whilst it's all fine and dandy to say "Yeah, they should've done it anyway" just think.. If we put a filter in without SMT approval, even if we spent a grand total of £0.00 and could cite numerous legal reasons as to why it was the right thing to do.. If management had said no, would we not get flak for it? I reckon we would.

 

Perhaps the school had an end-user policy that stated the iPad's were unmanaged and the school were to accept no responsibility of anything resulting from their use? Not the best solution, but perhaps management felt it was an adequate one? (if so, I bet they're running for the hills now..!).. It's entirely possible that both management and the IT tech's both thought "Sod it, don't care." and it's entirely possible they didn't know free MDM existed, or it's entirely possible the IT staff wanted to apply filtering but were shot down. We don't really know. The school definitely could have done more, I think we all agree with that.. But none of us can truly say why they didn't.

 

Unless there's an IT tech from Honywood Community school here.. In which case I'd love to hear from you, but I suspect you're not allowed to talk about it.

[X-13]

I would like to point out that Meraki MDM is free to use and a VPN Server can be setup for free also (as long as you have a server lying around or virtual servers)

 

Doesn't Meraki have to be set up manually for each device? That's a lot of time to spend on this.

 

Same with setting up a VPN server [which wouldn't have occurred to me].

 

 

From the sounds of it, these were bought then given straight to pupils. Which, after 8 years in education, doesn't surprise me.

 

With that setup above the school WOULD have prevented this and the only reason I can think of logically why they wouldn't is because - Lazy or Inexperienced staff that didn't know these solutions existed.

 

Stop being an ass.

 

"They were lazy", "they're incompetant".

 

They were overruled, ignored or simply not told.

 

 

I only found out someone had bought Learnpads AFTER they were bought. I wasn't involved at all. Same with our 2 sets of laptops.

Edited January 19, 2015 by X-13

[matt40k]

We don't know the full details we are just assuming, how do we know that the IT department did not raise concerns but either was not listened to or was told there was no budget for MDM etc.

 

This isn't a IT problem, IT is just a tool. MDM etc would be like have a fire extinguishers and fire alarms, they won't stop fires. They're all pointless if they aren't actually used correctly, ie monitored. Let's face it, if it came up and blocked it, what's the chances the teacher would have put in a call to IT to unblock it?

 

It's hard to point the finger without all the facts, it's easy enough to blame the school as that's where it happened, far as we know they have raised it months ago with social services and they've done nothing. They could be on Essex LA broadband (E2BN), they could have a unfiltered standard BT connection. We don't know. All we know is a number of things have happened that could of been prevented it from happening. IE proper classroom monitoring by staff (again, no IT application\service\device can solve this, it can make easier, that's it).

 

Also regarding comments about the Daily Mail, it's a tabloid, what do you expect.

[simpsonj]

But if the school had blocked Skype, nothing would have stopped her, or other teenagers, from accessing those sites with their own devices. Admittedly the school would not legally responsible, but there's still a failing of safeguarding, but now it's not within the school, who will pick up on it?

 

I find it an odd disconnect between the school teaching e-safety, and to be wary of social networking, but rather than allowing students to utilize social media in a safe, monitored environment, schools restrict access of anything to do with social media, and so students experiment at home, with no supervision or guidance, just some vague memories of a powerpoint presentation showed to them in a PSHCE lesson once.

 

Yes, the school could have legally covered themselves with better technology, as @abillybob suggests, I just don't know if that's solving the problem, or pushing it away onto the parents.

[Garacesh]

Been discussing this with my colleagues and one of them just raised a valid point.. Schemes like this are usually contributed to by the parents.. With that in mind, can the school lock down the devices if they parents have contributed towards the cost? The device isn't 100% theirs. Tricky situation. Probably one for writing a policy about before they start going round with the collection bucket.