When it comes to it, you have to trust the school to protect your kids.

And from this writer’s personal experience, schools, especially in the U.K., are extremely paranoid when it comes to protecting their kids online. Not only are they fearful of what their charges might find on the web, but they are also concerned about the possible legal cases that would follow if a child was exposed to something sinister whilst online at school.

Individual schools have quite firm policies about surfing, which have to be agreed by the Governors and made available to the parents.

Schools see the internet as a research tool, not as a means of communicating with their friends. So, in most schools, pupils will find it hard to access Facebook, MySpace, or any number of social networking websites. And YouTube is most definitely out.

At least the internet has given a new job for school IT managers, who have to stay one step ahead of some very clever kids in trying to bust the system. Schools run quite draconian software programmes that effectively block out a whole host of sites that might lead to unsuitable material. These are very strict parental control applications. The frustration for the kids, and teachers alike, is that these applications are rather too good. And what happens, is that even innocent sites are listed as potentially too risky to be viewed.

And again from personal experience, this writer’s daughter, whilst researching her ‘A’ Level religious education course, did a search on Google “Buddhism”, and the school’s software stepped in and listed a number of the websites as inappropriate, due to “explicit sexual content.” This included the official website of the Dalai Lama, which does not, obviously, contain pornography, but you get the point. In protecting the kids from potential harmful material, they often go too far and close down many perfectly acceptable sites.

To stop against some of the brighter pupils getting around the software, the I.T. employs a number of ruses, including random checks whilst pupils are surfing and checking accessed URLs when the kids have gone home. Also, most I.T. departments have a screen in their office which randomly displays the screens of those surfing connecting at the time. So anyone accessing anything dubious will be paying a visit to the headmaster’s office very quickly.

The computer literate kids do find ways around the I.T. department’s tactics – I won’t mention these, but suffice to say that there are many searches for site proxies – but the physical aspect of watching whilst people surf, is a very good safeguard.

As a parent, the best thing to do when your child joins a school, is to check on their computer use policies and see if they match your standards. You should be okay, as the last thing a school wants is loads of irate parents arriving at school and complaining what Johnny saw on the internet.

So, don’t worry about your kid’s school; worry more about what they’re doing on the home computers.

Safer Surfing for Kids at School – Recap

• schools are good at controlling access;
• software is in place to watch over usage;
• check with school policies when joining.