Best practices: Using peer education to transform e-safety in schools

At the UK Safer Internet Centre, our consortium has been working to help make the internet a great and safe place for young people for the last twenty years, and over that time we’ve learned a lot about the best ways that we can empower young people and those who support them.

One of the most important things we can do is to give young people the power to shape and improve their own online communities, as our inspiring #Up2Us Film created by 150 schoolchildren showed. Young people can play a powerful role in educating their peers – by providing relatable and up to date advice – and shaping a school’s ethos by acting as role models. Schools can also capitalise on young people’s tech expertise and understanding of young people’s digital lives to educate parents, carers and school staff. Indeed, last Safer Internet Day we found that more than three quarters (78%) of 11-16s believe that young people have the power to create a kinder online community. 

Ofsted’s inspection handbook on e-safety (published April 2014 and withdrawn July 2014) sets out key features of good and outstanding practice, and a number of these indicators relate to the active involvement and leadership of young people.

Examples include:

Mhairi Hill, the E-Safety Coordinator at Ballyclare High School, one of the schools involved in the pilot and the first school in Northern Ireland to achieve the E-Safety Mark, said:

“In our school, being part of the pilot of the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme has had a wide-ranging impact. The Digital Leaders have helped to increase awareness about e-safety by delivering a peer-education session that reached all 187 of our Year 9. The young leaders also held a Social Media Workshop for parents, created wall displays and produced a video encouraging their peers to ‘Make the Right Choice Online’, which has been displayed on screens around school. As a result, the Digital Leaders have become champions and role models for the safe use of technology at Ballyclare High School. Pupil voice has been a powerful tool in shaping our set of esafety-related policies, and has helped to create an ethos of positive technology use in school.”

Despite the importance and effectiveness of youth engagement in delivering outstanding e-safety provision in schools, the latest findings show that while this is improving year on year, it is still one of the weakest areas of e-safety provision in schools.

UKSIC partners, the South West Grid for Learning, produce an Annual Analysis, which looks at the self-review data from 5,500 UK schools using the free self-assessment tool 360 Degree Safe.

In 2014, it was found that while the strongest areas are around filtering and policies, schools are weakest when it comes to youth engagement, community engagement and training of staff and governors.

To help schools harness the power of youth voice and make e-safety learning fun and effective, UKSIC partner Childnet has launched its new youth leadership programme, with support from the European Commission and Facebook, which will help schools to deliver an outstanding whole school community approach to e-safety.

To find out more visit www.childnet.com/digital-leaders.