Online Child Safety Curriculum — Passionate Reply to Secretary of State for Education
If you have 10 minutes free then please watch the video as it shows just how much this topic means to me personally.
If you have 10 minutes free then please watch the video as it shows just how much this topic means to me personally.
Before Christmas, I spoke to my local MP Michelle Donelan whilst she was knocking on doors and meeting the local constituents. I took the opportunity to chat with her about my efforts over the years to help educate people on the subject of online child safety and also raised the issue that the subject was not on the official curriculum for primary and secondary schools in the UK. Michelle told me that somebody would reach out for more detail and to my surprise, somebody from her office did indeed reach out to me. and after I provided some more detail they stated that Michelle was happy to write to the Secretary of State for Education on my behalf.
That was in November and in December I received a reply from Michelle’s office forwarding the below response.
This was not the early Christmas present I had hoped for though. The reply from Gillian Keegan does indeed contain many of the buzzwords that might placate many people. I on the other hand decided to look at the details within the reply. First, by looking at the link that was provided to the ‘Compulsory’ Relationships, Sex & Health education she quoted. Having seen the word compulsory I honestly thought that maybe this was something that I had missed and there was already something in place, about 7 lines into the document though I saw “Schools free to determine how to deliver” my heart sank at those words. That's like saying this is really important and you must do it but we don't really care how or to what standard you do it.
When I was growing up stranger danger was really simple, don't talk to strangers, don't get in cars with them, don't take sweets and run to an adult and tell them, everybody knew these things and it was something that was etched into the minds of many of us. With the advent of technology though this has become more complicated as human nature dictates that if people don't understand something, they ignore it so they don't look silly. That has enabled predators to gain an upper hand and they no longer need to risk being caught by approaching children on the street or in a park, they can instead spend weeks and months pretending to be another child building a friendship before asking to meet, the rest of that sentence I am sure you can imagine. I speak as a person who has first-hand experience analysing images that are created by evil paedophiles who use that grooming to enact their depravity on children. They see what they do as a ‘normal’ relationship and will never see it as wrong. This is what you need to protect children from and this is what the government need to ensure children are educated about to be able to recognise the danger and protect themselves.
I think my point from the very beginning of my quest was that there needs to be a standard curriculum in place, one that has been created by proficient individuals that know what is important on the topic of online child safety. Reading further into the guidance and I could see there was lots of advice regarding how to create policies but no real substance to how the subject needed to be taught, it did provide links to resources on the subject but again you are just signposting people to an abundance of different resources with different messages and content and no real understanding of how to pull this together into a lesson plan that will cover all the required areas. This all adds to the huge differences in the standards of education on this subject across schools in the UK, from grade A to non-existent.
Further into the guidance, there were tables containing what primary & secondary pupils ‘should’ know when they leave. I will admit that this angered me as when talking about the safety of children online we shouldn't settle with ‘should’ and should be striving for ‘will definitely’. Instead of tables containing details like this, why don't they put energy into creating and mandating an education program that has been built by people who know what they are talking about, rather than rely on teachers who are already being pushed to their limits to educate children on mainstream subjects. This ensures that all children who have access to education are also receiving the same consistent standard of education on the subject of online safety.
I am creating a petition on the subject of “Create & Implement a full package of Online Child Safety for the curriculum” and will post the link to this separately once it has been approved and goes live. I want to thank Michelle Donelan for her action on my behalf and also Gillian Keegan for her reply as it shows they at least listened to me. I have offered to stand up in front of a room full of MPs to tell them exactly why we need to do more and I will go into as much detail as it takes to explain to them that more action and fewer buzzwords are needed. In my video listed at the top I had to stop myself from going into that detail but I will put myself through the pain and horror it causes me if it will achieve the desired end result. I am starting the petition as I believe that this is something that needs to be debated between all members of parliament and not just a conversation between myself and two MPs.
I will ask anyone who has read this to please share it far and wide and also share the video too. I don't enjoy causing myself pain by doing these things but the pain is insignificant compared to the pain and torture that children who suffer abuse go through every day and carry with them for the rest of their lives until you look into their eyes you just can't understand and I hope you never have to.
This is one of those times when I need the power of the internet to do something good, I need people to support this campaign and to open their eyes to the evil that lives out there, you may not understand technology but don't use that as an excuse to ignore the threats to children that exist. Use resources to learn about it, chat with your child and let them know they can talk to you and don't need to hide things from you. Look at some of my other content on this blog and my YouTube channel and most importantly, if you don't understand something then reach out and ask.
Please subscribe to the blog or the YouTube channel to receive a notification when I release the link to the live petition which I hope they will authorise soon.
An update to this can be found here
The link to my petition is here
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