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Dept for Education and Employment

Answer

Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what progress has been made with the Government's commitment to provide every school pupil with an e-mail address; and how he intends to ensure that children will not be (a) individually identifiable and (b) open to approaches by paedophiles when such addresses are allocated. [136213] Mr. Wills: [holding answer 6 November 2000]: The Government want fifty per cent. of pupils and students to have their own e-mail address by 2002. Good progress is being made towards achieving this. The majority of schools are now connected to the internet and almost all name>..sch.uk). Currently, 9 per cent. of primary school pupils, 26 per cent. of secondary school pupils and 13 per cent. of special school pupils have a personal e-mail address. Some schools are providing access through whole class/or teaching group e-mail accounts. We all share a responsibility to make sure that students' use of the internet is appropriate and safe. A range of measures to help to protect children have been publicised by my Department, via the Superhighway Safety information pack and website. These include, for example, monitoring pupils' computer use and the use of filtering software to prevent access to unsuitable internet material. The pack also includes a Disney `Doug' poster, which promotes safe internet use to young children. It is the school's duty to ensure that every child is safe and that no individual child should be identifiable or contactable. Our publications recommend that school websites should not contain either personal e-mail or postal addresses.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

357 c239-40W; 136213

Session

1999-00

Subjects

Access ICT Internet Email Pupils Offences against children Schools

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk