webby74 Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 Hi all We have had a couple of instances in the last week with inappropriate images (naked women, one case of porn) found on user areas and on pupils memory sticks and accessed on school computers. Here there seems to be various views on how best to deal with it. Some say ban, but that only works to the next lesson when they need to do coursework. Other say don't ban and contact parents. My question, at of curiosity, is how does your school deal with this issue? What do you do about pupils memory sticks being personal property?
DAckroyd Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 I'd have thought tempory ban and stop them using memory sticks but it should be an SLT/SMT policy
K.C.Leblanc Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 At my old school parents were called in and students had to do community service. This needs to be delt with by managment.
jcollings Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 Hi all We have had a couple of instances in the last week with inappropriate images (naked women, one case of porn) found on user areas and on pupils memory sticks and accessed on school computers. Here there seems to be various views on how best to deal with it. Some say ban, but that only works to the next lesson when they need to do coursework. Other say don't ban and contact parents. My question, at of curiosity, is how does your school deal with this issue? What do you do about pupils memory sticks being personal property? IMHO banning is a waste of time. What would your place do if a student brought in a p*rn mag? Personnally here we'd be looking at getting parents in etc.
TechMonkey Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 Print it out and send it home to parents to choke on over breakfast 3
sstar Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 we send a letter with the pictures attached to explain why their son/daughter is banned. a few months ago we had to send the "goatse" picture to a year 8's parents
CHR1S Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 Again, get parents involved. Sometimes even the threat of parental involvement is enough to have them turn into the nicest kids ever lol.
jcollings Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 I think you need to be careful of sending any images via the post that can be classed as obscene - I think it breaks some law or other.
Sylv3r Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 One thing I would make sure if covered before you contact the parents is to ensure that the school has tried to prevent all access to unsavoury sites through the use of filtering etc to the best of their capabilities. Some parents will no doubt, back their own son / daughter in saying that access to this sort of site should not be available within school anyway. Also do you have the sanctions documented in your student AUP? Have students / parents signed the AUP to say they agree with it?
GrumbleDook Posted March 2, 2009 Posted March 2, 2009 I think you need to be careful of sending any images via the post that can be classed as obscene - I think it breaks some law or other. Obscene publications act 1959 is the one usually used. In the same manner if you are going to show it to a parent who has been invited in then you must ask the parent if they want to see it ... not just thrust it in there face. You should also not show it to the student either in case they did not put it there and there is the allegation against you for forcing a minor to view obscene materials. Yep ... as said above you should treat it as much as you can as if a pr 0n mag had been brought in and as part of normal discipline policy.
webby74 Posted March 3, 2009 Author Posted March 3, 2009 Thanks for your replies. I agree with banning doesn't work. Our AUP states "inappropriate use of internet" which I feel needs to be updated. I have a meeting with my line manager tomorrow to discuss this issue. The general consensus at the school does seem to be not to ban and contact parents. I also agree that sending home a copy of evidence is not suitable. The parents can ask to see it if so wish.
enjay Posted March 3, 2009 Posted March 3, 2009 Print it out and send it home to parents to choke on over breakfast Don't do that with the pornographic ones, though - doing so would be illegal, and the school will be in the dock for distributing pornographic material...
enjay Posted March 3, 2009 Posted March 3, 2009 Also, as Tony says, the fact that it was an electronic image doesn't make it your job to discipline them - pass them to whatever disciplinary procedure the school has for other offences. Oh, and to pick up your earlier comment about pen drives being private property, they become part of the computer when connected, so you are legally allowed to scan them as you would the network. This might not extend as far as you finding one and plugging it in, but you're certainly okay to scan them while connected (just like your AV hopefully does).
Stuart_C Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 Our current school Policy says that they get banned form the comptuers. Our deputy head says that it's a policy and should be inforced. I have had a number of disagreements with staff over this about the disruptions to work etc including one where it took a massive ammount of selfcontrol on my part not to go off on one at a member of staff who just shouted me down and wasn't prepared to enter a discussion (no a smart move as he had just asked me to unblock Sky's E-mail site as his router at home was broken, "I'll just prioritise that"). I personally feel that schools should be educating in behaviour as well as raw information therefore I agree with enforcing the banning policy. It only works if that is carried down the line with pupils punished for not handing in work thus they see the effect of their actions. If the SMT want to have a different policy/punishment system then that should be stated, people informed and then the policy enforced. It would make my life far easier if pupils coul dbe put straight into detention but that is not the policy here. I have told people who have complained to raise it with SMT, discuss their problems and see about changing the policy. No one does. In short. Enfore the School policy regardless. If people complain explain that you are enforcing School Policy and if they don't like it they need to get SMT to change the policy.
maark Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 Regarding internet bans - we have setup smoothwall with limited user licences - anyone on a ban is forced through that proxy rather than the regular one and then can only access a limited allowed list of sites such as vle etc. This allows students to work still but not use rest of the internet.
enjay Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 @Stuart C - I agree 100% that we should enforce whatever the school policy is, but in the case of banning pupils from computers because of inappropriate images, I believe that policy to be flawed, potentially to the detriment of their learning, and in need of changing. If a kid was messing around in class, would you tell them "because of that you must do the lessons without your text book for the next 2 weeks"? If they were found writing threatening notes, would you ban them from using pens for 2 weeks? No, of course not! Why does it matter if the offence is electronic or not? If a kid is found to be cyber-bullying someone, your anti-bullying policy would kick in, you wouldn't just ban them from the network. Why is it one punishment for IT-related offences and one for other offences?
Stuart_C Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 There are some times when I agree and sometimes when I disagree with school policies, and I hate to use the "I'm only following orders" line but at the end of the day we are employed by the school to do a job. Part of that job includes the enforcement of school policies. We can't pick and choose which aspects of the job we want to do. SMT get paid a lot more than me and it's up to them to make the descisions. I'll quite happily advise on what is technically possible, potential problems (and give my own tuppence worth ) but at the end of the day it's up to the SMT to decide how things are run in "their" school. I do feel that we overuse the banning (which kids see as a joke punishment anyway) and you are right (as we are the same) why have a different set of punishments for behavioural problems in ICT rooms than in the rest of the school. Might mention that at some point, thaks for pointing out something really obvious that I totally failed to see.
Ric_ Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 I pass these to SLT who then 'discuss' the matter with the parents/guardians after showing them the image in question. An agreement is usually reached between the school and the parents - a short Internet ban usually and a stern telling off at home (worse than anything we could do because what self respecting parents wants their kid looking at porn in school?).
bossman Posted March 9, 2009 Posted March 9, 2009 We have a PLO (Pupil Link Officer) team who take all behaviour problems on-board and I just give them the proof of misbehaviour at student level and they deal with it it's as easy as that, what they do is structured from SLT so I don't get involved only if we get some stroppy parents and the SLT need Technical Knowledge to deal with the query. We have an AUP which is sent to all new year 7s prior to them starting and these are then kept on file for later reference any Student not bringing in a signed reply slip does not have access to the IT facilities and all parents are aware of this. We also have a usage policy on our website which states if the enduser is accessing the schools IT that in itself warrants the AUP and this is backed by SLT.
AngryTechnician Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 We had a particularly strong incident of this kind here last week. While reviewing our file auditing logs I noticed one student had added more than 600MB in a single day. When I inspected his documents it turned out to be a single .mpg, over an hour long. Clicking through a few frames while on pause quickly demonstrated it was hardcore pornography (thankfully nothing that would class it as extreme). I went straight to SMT with my findings. Both the student in question, and another student he identified as supplying the file via a USB stick, have been given a one-day exclusion after both sets of parents were called in. They have also had their guest access to the wireless network revoked.
mattx Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 Hi all We have had a couple of instances in the last week with inappropriate images (naked women, one case of porn) found on user areas and on pupils memory sticks and accessed on school computers. Here there seems to be various views on how best to deal with it. Some say ban, but that only works to the next lesson when they need to do coursework. Other say don't ban and contact parents. My question, at of curiosity, is how does your school deal with this issue? What do you do about pupils memory sticks being personal property? You should post them up on edugeek first using the /img tags for us to see & then pass judgement on. We can then advise you the course of action that should be taken.
rad Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 I send it though to the House Office to deal with, no point getting into dealing with it myself. Normally though they call me in to speak to the student as sometimes they true and pull the wool over their eyes. Had an incident where a student saved all the Page 3 girls into his area, 4 week internet ban. Oh and another who deicded to find a computer in the school to search for porn. Shame his parents were called in to the school and shown the screen shots (About the only time Securus works)
enjay Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 I send it though to the House Office to deal with, no point getting into dealing with it myself. I hope you mean that you send the issue to House Office, not the material - that would be illegal...
rad Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 They get an email and if they want to see the screen shots I'll show them. If the kids aren't given evidence they lie. Whats illegal about that?
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