Mother raises alarm about porn access in Highland schools after primary pupils accessed X-rated content
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One parent has raised the alarm that more than 16,000 Highland primary pupils are at risk of harm from seeing pornography through their school Google accounts due to inadequate online safeguards.
It has prompted Highland Council to launch an investigation.
The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said her own child has been left terribly disturbed, sleepless, distressed and frightened due to what they saw.
The primary pupil then went back to look again through their school account history of websites visited from home but she said the “shared knowledge of a medical search term led to them searching sexual terms”.
She slammed Highland Council’s response saying that as of this morning X-rated material was still accessible through her child’s school account, despite the local authority apparently testing the system.
In correspondence with officers, the mother was told that “the filters are currently working” and suggested that home WiFi was the issue despite acknowledgement that it was unclear why pornographic content was not blocked.
Yet various sexual terms – including descriptions of violence – were unfiltered by the system stoking fears that the security provided was inadequate, especially for pre-teens.
The mother said: “The thing is the first exposure was on another child’s Chromebook, my child didn’t want to see it or ask to see it but once their curiosity was piqued that is when they started searching for other terms they learnt from that page.
“Looking to check my child’s safety by logging in to their account and what came up, I wasn’t looking at it as an adult but I was looking at it through the eyes of my kid, thinking oh my God.
“The council only just removed one of the URLs that I reported to them on Monday but they still haven’t blocked the terms that lead into it because the actual filtering system is broken."
That led to difficult conversations happening much earlier than desirable as the worried mother tried to help the child understand adult issues.
She said: “I would say they are now confused about what happens when you grow up, confused by what people do during sex and intimacy and they were scared after seeing it. And about puberty as well.”
Nicky Grant, Highland Council’s executive chief officer for education, said: “Chromebooks supplied to all Highland pupils are protected by the student safety filter ‘Securly’ and all appropriate filtering configurations are in place to protect pupils.
“We can confirm that the council has received a complaint and are investigating the allegations with Securly and a response will be provided in due course to the complainant.
“The council delivers online safety support and training to all Highland schools, and this is an equally crucial part of keeping children safe.
“We would like to assure all parents and carers that pupil and staff safety is a priority of the Highland Council.”
