Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to provide (a) schools and (b) parents with guidance to protect young people from harmful content on social media platforms.

The department’s ‘Keeping children safe in education’ publication is the statutory safeguarding guidance that all school and colleges must have regard to.

This guidance provides schools and colleges with robust information on how to protect pupils and students online. The guidance has been significantly strengthened with regards to online safety in recent years. Online safety is now embedded throughout the guidance, making clear the importance of ensuring a whole school approach to keeping children safe both online and offline.

The guidance makes clear that schools and colleges should ensure appropriate filtering and monitoring systems are in place and that their effectiveness is regularly reviewed. This limits children’s exposure to harmful content while on school-managed computers

As part of the statutory relationships and health education (RHE) in primary schools and relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in secondary schools, pupils are taught about online safety and harms.

This includes being taught about the effects of their online actions on others, how to recognise and display respectful behaviour online and where to get help and support for issues that occur online. In addition, pupils should have a strong understanding of how data is generated, collected, shared and used online, for example, how personal data is captured on social media or understanding the way that businesses may exploit the data available to them.

Statutory guidance for RHE can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-education-primary. Statutory guidance for RSHE can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sex-education-rse-secondary.

Through the statutory national computing curriculum, from key stages 1 to 4 inclusive, there is progression in content to reflect the different and escalating risks that young people may encounter. The computing curriculum also provides pupils with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions whilst online or using other digital applications and technologies.

All schools are also required by law to have a behaviour policy which outlines effective strategies that will encourage good behaviour. Schools should be clear that even though the online space differs in many ways, the same standards of behaviour are expected online as apply offline and everyone should be treated with kindness, respect and dignity.

Finally, the Online Safety Act requires all services in scope to take steps to protect users, including children, from illegal content and criminal behaviour. Companies in scope of the Act will need to risk assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and if so, provide safety measures to protect children from harmful and age-inappropriate content.

Ofcom has a duty to promote media literacy to help the public understand the nature and impact of where harmful content and online behaviour affects certain groups.