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Child Safety and Web Publishing Policy - Details
Publishing Images of the children:
On the positive side:
- Family members living abroad can take great interest in seeing a niece,
grandson or relative on screen.
- School sites without children seem lifeless.
- It is through photos of children that we can communicate the ethos and
ambience of our schools.
On the negative:
- There is a danger that a pedophile may target a child seen on a web site
and even use information there to plan an abduction. Most recent figures
suggest that such "stranger danger", while it certainly exists,
represents only a small proportion of the threat of abuse to children.
- There may also be safety issues in the case of disputed parental custody of
a child. It may happen that a parent may not have access to a child or their
whereabouts. A school web site may unwittingly provide this information.
Admittedly, this seems a very minor danger, but the parent who has custody in
such circumstances would have a right and expectation of privacy.
Precautions:
- Many schools worldwide take an absolute position – i.e. that no image
should be used of any child on their web site. This is undoubtedly effective
but, in the light of the positive aspects mentioned above, may be extreme.
- A reasonably safe alternative is to limit the images to group photos. Given
the relatively poor resolution of web images this will eliminate many of the
concerns mentioned above while still allowing many of the advantages.
- Greatest care must be taken in associating an image with information. The
handling of personal information is dealt with in more detail in the following
pages. For now, suffice to say that a child in a web site image should never be
identified by name. A first name with initial might be given, but even that
should be limited to group pictures without identifying the individuals.
- Schools often like to put a child's picture beside a project or other piece
of work and it is less than ideal to refuse to put his/her name to it. A
compromise is to have two versions of the web site: one local, the other
global. The local version would be available only in the school, whether on a
network (if there is one) or individual machines. This version could safely
contain any material, including pictures and personal information. The global
version on the WWW would leave out personal details, and the image might be
replaced with a self-portrait drawn by the child.
- School sports and P.E. activities can form one of the most attractive
sections of many school web sites. Some thought should be given to the
publication of these images, as some sports clothing will be more revealing
than the typical school-wear.
- Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to have an image on display must
be decided by parents. In order to achieve the necessary confidence and
cooperation from parents, it is important to involve them in the process of
designing a Web Publishing Policy. At present, most parents may not be able to
access the school web site from home, but this too is changing rapidly. In the
light of this, some thought should be given to ways in which parents, and,
indeed pupils can browse and familiarize themselves with the school site. One
idea is to keep a copy of the site on the office computer, where parents could
be shown work accomplished by their proud son or daughter.
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