@ Sanctuary Buildings 20 Great Smith Street Department Westminster for Education London SW1P 38T Mr Jonathan Bishop ‘Swansea University Singleton Park SWANSEA SA2 8PP Your ref: Our ref: 2013/0001175 January 2013 Dear Mr Bishop, Thank you for your letter addressed to the Prime Minister, which he received on 21 December 2012, about how the Govémment is supporting behaviour management and e-safety in schools. Your letter has been passed to us at the Department for Education for reply. You raise some very important issues and government, school leaders, teachers and other organisations all have a part to play in addressing them. In your letter, you ask several questions about e-safety. Keeping children safe is a top priority for this Government, and while the intemet is a great resource, it is important that children and young people are protected when using it. Ministers firmly believe that the education and awareness of young people is a key part of the solution. Most primary schools and all secondary schools teach internet safety and it is part of the National Curriculum at secondary level. The Government understands that there are risks associated with young People going online and through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), the Government and its members work to improve the awareness and understanding of parents, children and teachers regarding online safety. This includes educating children and young people about the implications of their online behaviour and safety issues such as the “digital footprint” they leave, particularly where information or images of an extremely personal nature are concerned. As you suggest other risks include cyber-bullying, and also harmful contentsuch as pro-anorexia or suicide information, sexual images, grooming and scams. UKCCIS also encourages innovative projects from individual members such as Vodafone's Digital Parenting magazine, which will be distributed to thousands of parents and which contains practical ‘how to’ guides on setting up parental controls and privacy settings on a range of services such as Xbox and Facebook. In February 2012, UKCCIS launched its child internet safety guidance that allows industry to provide consistent messages on child internet s themes. Facebook, the BBC and others are using the guidance, which should mean that whatever online service children are using, they receive sound and consistent messages about what to do if they what to prevent harm or if they have become upset by something online. You ask several questions about funding. The Department grant funds the Joint Academic Network (JANET), the UK's academic and research network whose primary aim is to provide and develop a network infrastructure that meets the needs of the research and education communities. JANET provides the high speed fibre backbone or “core” of the UK academic network and is the route on to the internet for the majority of schools as well as Higher Education and Further Education traffic. JANET also provides an interconnection between each RBC (Regional Broadband Consortium), thus forming the National Education Network; enabling schools to receive, transmit and share data through a safe and secure network. DfE funding is £1,048,303 for 2012-13 and £1,049,099 for 2013-14. Inhis speech to the BETT conference on 10 February 2012, the Secretary of State highlighted the need for schools to make more effective use of educational technology across the curriculum. To support this, he made a specific commitment to provide dedicated funding to Teaching Schools which are forming networks to help other schools develop and improve their use of technology (Teaching Schools offer high-quality approaches to teacher training, staff development and school improvement). £60,000 will be provided to teaching schools during the 2011-12 academic year in basic funding, followed by £50,000 in 2012-13 and then £40,000 each year. The National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services is co- ordinating the programme. Further information on Teaching Schools is available via the following links: JNwww.education.aov. uk/nationalcoll schools/teachinaschools.htm and http: /Avww.education,gov,ul/schools/careers/traininganddevelopmentfundina. In addition, the Government is funding the Open University (£1.25 million) to run the VITAL Programme which provides teachers with ICT CPD (continuing professional development). Itis also funding the British Computer Society (€150k) to set up a national network of excellence in teaching computer science, to train up “master” teachers and provide CPD. i fing i i i training in ‘Additional funding is not provided to schools specifically for staff relation to behaviour management. Ministers recognise the need for teachersto be sufficiently trained in this area and have thus strengthened the role of behaviour management in training and standards for teachers. The ability to manage behaviour effectively to ensure a good and safe leaming environment is now one of the eight standards that all teachers are required to meet in order to qualify. To assist training providers and trainees, ‘Improving teacher training for behaviour’ has been developed to complement the new Teachers’ Standards that all teachers have to demonstrate from September 2012. In terms of schools sharing resources, the Government strongly supports co- operation and collaboration between schools but does not wish to prescribe how schools might do this. Schools can tap into expertise from across the country through national and local leaders of education, and a network of over 200 Teaching Schools. Yours sincerely, Claire Munnelly Behaviour and Attendance in Schools Division