Students who are given a greater degree of freedom to surf the internet at school are less vulnerable to online dangers in the long-term, according to British school survey.

According to a recently report published (as part of E-safety Week):

• "Managed" online systems were more successful than "locked" ones at safeguarding students’ safety
• The area most in need of improvement was online safety training for teaching staff.

Of 35 different schools, e-safety was found to be excellent in five, good in 16, satisfactory in 13 and inadequate in one. The five schools judged outstanding for online safety all used managed systems with fewer inaccessible sites than locked down systems and thus students must take responsibility for themselves.

Education is the key
The study also found that the best practice was helping students from a very early age, to evaluate the risk of accessing sites and therefore gradually to acquire skills which would help them adopt safe practices even when not supervised.

Source: Pupils 'must manage online risks', BBC News, February 10, 2010

Tags: UK, online child safety