Incident Description
A year 6 pupil created a fake snapchat account impersonating a member of school staff.
They screen shared themselves accessing staff’s social media platforms with a group of pupils, snipping their personal pictures and sharing them in the group.
Parents had screenshots of the messages and images however they did not have any idea who this could be, other than they believed them to be in year 6 as they only have connection with other year 6 pupils.
Guidance for Safeguarding Response
- School DSL discussed this with parents following this disclosure from 2 pupils within school
- Parents were aware as they had been keeping a record of their children’s activity
- Year 6 were spoken to around the safe use of technology and social media platforms reinforcing the message around consent and the illegal activity of using people’s images without their knowledge and agreement and impersonating someone else. The age of criminal responsibility was reiterated
- School sent a letter home to the whole year group highlighting the concern, encouraging parents/carers to check their children’s devices and also signposting them to ‘internet matters’ to support the addition of parental controls if they are not already in place
- Discuss online safety workshops from external/ independent safeguarding support service to reiterate the key messages and importance
- School to check if they can identify who has created the account through location settings if these are switched on
- DSL to reiterate key messages around privacy settings and encourage staff to change their names on social media platforms to prevent their images being used
- School to record the incident without names being attached as names can be attached if identified later
- School chose not to inform the police of this incident as it was the first of its kind that they had been made aware of and they could not identify the main perpetrator
Additional points which could be considered:
- Pol-ed sessions for the child and wider peer group from KS2 and KS3 resources such as ‘Are we responsible with social media’