Parental Controls on Mobile Phones

[sarahstacey]

Hi,

 

Has anyone had any experience of setting parental controls on mobile phones?

 

Whether this is practical in a school situation I'm not sure, but I've been asked to investigate.

 

Has anyone set this up in their school? Any help would be appreciated, it's such a tricky one.

 

Many thanks

[TwistedHelixis]

Which phone? Most have some built in options and some good app options

[sarahstacey]

Mostly iphones but some androids too

[Passat1983ICTech]

has anyone google it about this ive done a few on iphones and androids as well

[elsiegee40]

I'm pretty sure there was something on this in vodaphone's digital parenting magazine. I can't remember which issue. If you Google they're all available as pdf downloads

[jthompson]

Hi,

 

Whether this is practical in a school situation I'm not sure, but I've been asked to investigate.

 

Has anyone set this up in their school? Any help would be appreciated, it's such a tricky one.

 

 

Presumably this is all with a view to just publishing advice to parents about how they might do it? In which case, it's probably best to refer to an organisation such as the NSPCC and let the parents sort it out themselves, rather than authoring some kind of definitive guide yourselves (which may well go out of date on you).

 

I don't think a school really wants to have any administrative control over children's privately owned phones (other than users opting in to policies for email, etc.).

[Craig_Impero]

Some points you will need to consider include....

 

There are significant limitations of control you have on any device without you being the "supervisor" of the device.

It is possible to manage/supervise a device as a parent but this will mean wiping the device as part of the process.

The younger the student the easier that conversation is.

Once in a supervised state it is possible to share the management of a device with a third party (The school).

I am aware of schools which have achieved this but its most certainly not without its challenges.

[sarahstacey]

I've just been tasked with seeing what's possible. It's the issues around social media which are causing problems. We can obviously block sites when the pupils are using our wifi but not when they use 4G etc.

Like I said it's a tricky one.

[elsiegee40]

@esafety_officer will have the latest links

[esafety_officer]

As others have said, it depends on the aims of why it is that you are doing this. It may also depend on the type of school involved, for example the approaches for a Secondary school or College are likely to be different to that of a Primary or Special School.

 

If the aim is simply to signpost parents to resources which will enable them to apply appropriate parental controls to their child's devices for when children are at home, or explore social media sites etc. then I'd suggest the following (some are aimed at parents of younger children, some will be suitable for all ages):

Internet Matters

Uk Safer Internet Centre - Parent's Guide to Technology

Parents and carers - Childnet

Think U Know How to Guides

Net Aware - NSPCC

Parent Info

Vodafone Digital Parenting

NSPCC Online Safety

NSPCC Share Aware

 

We also signpost to other useful links to share with parents/carers here: Online e-safety useful links and information - kelsi.org.uk

 

Schools are limited to what they can do with regards to personally owned devices. The school can request that any on site use of mobile phones etc. is in line with the school AUP and that pupils use the school wifi which should then be appropriately filtered and monitored in line with statutory requirements. Robust classroom management approaches will then be required to be implemented by all staff so the school can check/ensure that the policy is enforced. Any misuse or breaches should be dealt with in line with your school online safety/child protection/behaviour policy. If you are having specific issues outside of school e.g. pupils use of social media at home, then the school Designated Safeguarding Lead should be informed, and they should take action in line with the school child protection and online safety policies etc.

 

It also would be worth considering if appropriate education messages are in place within the curriculum - for example are the education messages given to pupils up-to-date and appropriate? Is it staff saying "don't use social media; it's dangerous" rather than supporting pupils to develop appropriate online behaviours and responses. We find that a focus on banning/blocking etc. rarely deals with the underlying behaviour issues that cause issues on social media, and tends to lead to a reactive rather than proactive response - this is rarely effective in the long term.

 

I know of one school that gave parents the option of attending practical workshops to help them put parental controls on their children's devices - this was run with great success by the technical staff by will support and assistance by the PTA and Designated Safeguarding Lead. Another school offered a similar workshop for parents when they were rolling out BYOD. They stated that pupils could only use their devices in school once their parents had attended a workshop. The session then went through the school's expectations for safe and appropriate use/behaviour (and included the parent and child signing a specific AUP there and then) and also signposted parents towards guidance and advice regarding online safety including applying parental controls.