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New regulations for schools in next stage of attendance drive

New regulations for schools in next stage of attendance drive

Source: Department for Education published on this website Thursday 29 February 2024 by Jill Powell

Every state school in England will now share their daily attendance registers across the education sector - including with the department for education, councils, and trusts in the next stage of the government’s drive to reduce pupil absence in school.

The sharing of daily school registers will form a new world-leading attendance data set that will help schools spot and support children displaying worrying trends of persistent absence or those in danger of becoming missing in education.

Schools, trusts and councils will be able to access this data via an interactive secure data dashboard maintained by the department for education. This will allow them easy use of the data to not only spot pupils in need of support but also to understand how their attendance position compares locally and nationally so they can look at where they might need to drive improvements.  

These reforms are the next phase in the government’s plan to improve attendance following the pandemic which has seen a worldwide rise in absence and persistent absence driven by broken habits of attendance, and new and exacerbated barriers like mental ill health.

The government’s plan to improve attendance has included expanding the attendance hubs programme to 32 hubs across the country, which share best practice to schools supporting more than one million pupils, plus piloting attendance mentors, who work directly with pupils to tackle their barriers to attendance alongside a national awareness campaign aimed at helping parents. Our plan is already working, with 380,000 fewer pupils persistently off school over the course of last year.

Parent fines for unauthorised absences will also be brought under a national framework to help tackle inconsistencies in their use. A fine to parents must be considered if a child misses 5 days of school for unauthorised absence. Alongside this, costs for fines will go up from £60 to £80 if paid within 21 days and from £120 to £160 if paid in 28 days which will ensure all parents are aware of when they might face a fine to ensure all councils are issuing fines appropriately. 

Today the Department for Education has also announced Rob Tarn, CEO of Northern Education Trust and the founder of England’s first attendance hub, as the new national attendance ambassador. Rob will work with schools and school leaders to champion attendance, share effective practice, and support the ongoing development of the attendance hubs programme nationally.

Key guidance setting out how schools and local authorities must take a ‘support-first’ approach to help pupils and their families to tackle barriers to attendance will be made statutory from August 2024.  The working together to improve school attendance guidance sets expectations including regular meetings between schools and local authorities to agree plans for the most at-risk absent children.  

It particularly emphasises the importance of support for pupils with SEND and mental ill health who often need more individual consideration due to wider barriers. It asks schools, local authorities and wider services to work together to support these pupils, encouraging early intervention and close working with families to address their individual needs.  

Dark web child abuse forum administrators jailed

Source: Crown Prosecution Service published on this website Wednesday 28 February 2024 by Jill Powell

The second moderator of a dark web forum for sharing indecent pictures of children to be jailed within a week has today received five years and four months in prison.

William Yates, 45, admitted running The Annex, a membership-only forum which hosted a number of areas dedicated to child sexual abuse. The site worked by promoting users from guests to members by live chat participation and sharing imagery.

Investigators in Germany started focusing on The Annex in 2019 and seized servers in Romania and Moldova. From this they were able to identify the hierarchy of the management as well as users.

CPS prosecutors have been involved since the early stages of the investigation, providing legal advice to the National Crime Agency as well as liaising with law enforcement bodies across the world. The purpose of this was to ensure all suspects identified in England and Wales would face justice for their roles in the illegal sites and global distribution of images of child abuse.

Lawyers also looked through the evidence collected in order to demonstrate the scale of the offenders’ illegal acts, in order for them to face the appropriate sentence and to protect children in the future from sexual abuse.

One user – “yates704” – acted as a Gateway Assistant Moderator. An investigation by the National Crime Agency found that the user was a 42-year-old man calling himself Martin Yates. Further work helped officers identify Yates’s IP address and his physical address in Eastbourne, Sussex.

The seized server showed Yates had engaged in more than 6,000 private messages with other Annex users between March and September 2020, ranging from fantasy role play to providing advice to users on how to post indecent images of children.

Images that Yates had posted were uncovered by police in Australia and an FBI investigation in the United States of America revealed WhatsApp videos of Yates.

When he was interviewed Yates admitted being an Annex user since 2019. He had been offered a role as a staff member and then as moderator, where he would promote or demote users.

Specialist prosecutor Emma Lile, of the CPS Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit, said:

“Yates worked his way up the site’s hierarchy by posting indecent content, then encouraged others to do the same. Our international work was vital in ensuring we had a strong case against Yates so that he will no longer be able to spread imagery or encourage the abuse of children.”

Nathan Bake, 28, from Runcorn, was the second in command of the Annex and had been since November 2022. On February 14, he was jailed for 16 years.

Bake’s role was to encourage users to keep the site busy. He posted more than 600 times over a 10-week period from August to October 2022, but had been a member for two-and-a-half years. Bake’s messages linked to indecent images of children.

He was also a head moderator of another site providing a number of links to child exploitation sites and a co-creator of a further website, which had the sole purpose of discussing and posting indecent images of children.
Bake was identified after FBI officers obtained a copy of the server hosting The Annex. When his home and devices were searched by NCA officers, they discovered more than 3.5 million images including some classed as extreme, as well as a paedophile manual.

The majority of defendants identified are facing justice in America. Yates is the third to be sentenced in the UK, following Bake and Kabir Garg, 33, a junior doctor from Lewisham, London, who received a six-year jail term in June last year. Garg was fourth or fifth in the hierarchy of The Annex.

Nicola Haywood, unit head of the Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit at the CPS, said:

“These online organisers of child sexual abuse thought they could hide under anonymity on the dark web. But thanks to the expertise of lawyers at the CPS Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit, through coordination of international investigations, we have been able to unravel their senior roles within this atrocious website and ensure they face justice and help stop further abuse.”

New law to stop thousands of offenders from changing their name in secret

Source: Ministry of Justice published on this website Monday 26 February 2024 by Jill Powell

Thousands of offenders on community and suspended sentences will no longer be able to secretly change their name as part of tough new rules to protect the public.

The Community and Suspended Sentences (Notification of Details) Bill will bring the law for those on community orders in line with offenders on licence. The Private Members’ Bill passed its second reading in Parliament on Friday 23 February, after the Government signalled its support. 

The change will mean all offenders and youth criminals will have to notify their probation officer about any name changes, online aliases or changes to contact details.

Offenders who refuse to comply could be taken back to court facing a tougher sentence, including possible prison time.  

Prisons and Probation Minister, Edward Argar, said:    

“Deceitful offenders should never be able to hide from justice and any offender that tries to do this will be punished. Our number one priority is public protection so it is vital that our probation officers have all the information they need to keep a watchful eye on offenders – whether that be online or in real life.”

The Bill was brought forward by Ruth Jones MP she said:

“I am delighted that my Bill has secured its Second Reading, on a cross party basis, and will continue its passage through Parliament.This Bill is about keeping our communities safe and ensuring that we do that in deeds as well as words. I look forward to taking the Bill through to its next stage - it cannot come a minute sooner.”

This Bill comes alongside the Home Secretary’s commitment to restrict the ability of certain registered sex offenders to change their name in specific circumstances, which will be included in the Criminal Justice Bill. 

These changes will strengthen the Probation Service’s ability to robustly supervise offenders in the community and keep the public safe. Funding for the Probation Service has been increased by an additional £155 million a year since 2020/21 to recruit record levels of staff and reduce caseloads. The number of Probation staff in post has increased by 17% since June 2021.

The Bill will amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to create a duty on offenders to notify probation or Youth Offending Teams of any change of name and/or contact details if they are sentenced to a Community Order, Suspended Sentence Order, Youth Rehabilitation Order or Referral Order.

Criminal Justice Bill: Overarching factsheets updated on 23 February 2024

Source: Home Office published on this website Tuesday 27 February 2024 by Jill Powell

These factsheets provide more information about the Criminal Justice Bill which was introduced in the House of Commons on 14 November 2023.

UK Safer Internet Centre Announces Accredited Filtering Systems for UK Schools and Colleges

Source: UK Safer Internet Centre published on this website Wednesday 23 February 2024 by Jill Powell

The UK Safer Internet Centre (UK SIC) is pleased to announce that Lightspeed Systems, Netsweeper and Smoothwall are the first filtering systems to be accredited under the new filtering accreditation scheme provided by the UK SIC.

As technology has developed, so have Filtering and Monitoring systems. The ever-changing online landscape has made this an increasingly complex area where schools and colleges have evidently needed more support in selecting, deploying and managing their filtering and monitoring systems.

Filtering Accreditation Scheme

The newly introduced accreditation scheme builds on the appropriate filtering and monitoring guidance provided by the UK Safer Internet Centre since it was first published in 2016.  For schools in England, these have been embedded in Keeping children safe in education – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and subsequently Filtering and monitoring standards for schools and colleges – Guidance – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)) to help schools (and IT providers) comprehend what should be considered as ‘appropriate’ filtering and monitoring.

Using these appropriate filtering standards, the UK Safer Internet Centre, in partnership with the University of Bristol (REPHRAIN), assesses both the technical capabilities of filtering systems as well as verify their suitability for use in schools and colleges, to provide further trust and confidence in what systems schools decide to implement.

Accredited Systems

We are pleased to announce that Lightspeed Systems, Netsweeper and Smoothwall have successfully passed this assessment process and have achieved an accredited filtering system status. The UK Safer Internet Centre is now working on accrediting more filtering systems and will announce more in due course.

David Wright (Director of UK Safer Internet Centre) said: 

“To have this scheme in place, will afford schools and colleges greater confidence about the selection, suitability and effectiveness of their filtering systems. We have seen first-hand the importance of filtering and monitoring systems, and now, this added layer of validation can support schools to strengthen their own protections against harmful online content. We recognise Lightspeed Systems, Netsweeper and Smoothwall to have filtering systems suitable for schools and colleges and invite other providers to join the initiative.”