Incident Description
A Year 6 pupil set up a Facebook account and invited pupils from her primary school to join the group.
She then identified a pupil from her own school and a pupil from another local school and posed the question ‘Who do you think will win the fight?’.
The school was notified by a parent of a child who had been included in the group.
The child did not report it to their parent but the parent had been checking their child’s online activity.
Guidance for Safeguarding Response
- School contacted the community police officer who met with the child and discussed the implications of inciting violence, highlighting that the child had reached the age of criminal responsibility
- School contacted the parent/s of the child who set up the Facebook account and advised them to close the account down on advice from the community police team
- If police were involved, school were aware they should not impede on a police investigation and/or support a child/[parents to delete evidence
- School contacted the parents of the other children involved and made them aware of the Facebook page
- School posted a reminder to all parents to have regular open conversations with their children about inappropriate posts online and reporting them
- School re-evaluated their online safety curriculum and their teaching of children to report and share concerns and inappropriate content as none of their children had reported the concern to an adult at home or in school
- School spoke with Year 5 and 6 about the criminal activity of inciting violence online and highlighted the age of criminal responsibility
- School DSL facilitated online safety workshops delivered by their external safeguarding support to specifically highlight this type of incident
- Information was recorded on the school’s system for the children involved and number of incidents tracked for individual children (Category: Online safety outside of school)
- Safety plans were developed for 2 children who have been involved in numerous online incidents outside of school specifically around sending inappropriate messages on WhatsApp
Additional actions which could be considered:
- Pol-ed sessions for the child and wider peer group from KS2 and KS3 resources such as ‘What is bullying?’, ‘How can we use our phones sensibly?’ and ‘are we responsible with social media?’
Agencies Involved in this Incident
Community police to spoke 1:1 with the child who initiated the post and to the group involved, about the legal implications.