Yesterday (30th October) the Manchester Evening News was carrying banner headlines about children accessing porn on school computers. My initial thought was, "Here we go again, yet another internet scare story involving schools." I just loved the article's opening sentence: "HUNDREDS of kids are looking at pornography on school computers every day." Not looking to pull punches then?
The article goes on to show how the private company, "e-safe education", part of Zentek, conducted research into web use at "40 primary and secondaries in the county." Confusingly, in the comments below the article, Colin McKeown, MD of e-safe stated, in response to my own comment that, "The data we have evaluated [was] from across the UK, not just Manchester..." (my bracket). I also added a further comment asking for clarification as to what constituted a "serious alert" which has not appeared below the article.
So, what we have is a story about some "research" (no links provided as to where this research might be published) by a company specialising in e-safety solutions. It's not entirely clear if the research is local, and it's not clear what constituted a serious alert. And, since the company conducting the research are peddling e-safety solutions, it could hardly claim to be independent either.
In fairness, I think the article, although somewhat sensationalised (hey, it's a local newspaper) does have a point, and it's this: schools simply have to start taking responsibility for their own web connections, instead of relying upon the local authority filters. I've blogged about this before:
I also added a comment about my own experiences about monitoring the internet at my primary school at the foot of an article by Ewan Macintosh . The software in use at this school was, I believe, supplied by these people: Forensic Software.co.uk who, presumably are a competitor of E-safe Education. I feel bound to point out that I have no relationship with this company other than to say that their software is excellent.
So, let's see the research; let's understand what constitutes a serious threat before we make such sweeping generalised statements as this article does. It's interesting to note that when I last checked the article only had 8 comments attached, which compares exceedingly poorly to any article that is posted about the Manchester congestion charge. Could it be that the public can smell a rat, or are they simply not interested?
