Recent tragic and unpleasant events have brought the issue of “trial by Twitter” and social media campaigns into the spotlight. This is a threat students, teachers and school leaders have faced for a long time.
Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has announced an investigation into sustained harassment through social media and we have written to him to highlight the challenges faced by those in frontline public service. He rightly wants to balance freedom of speech with freedom from intimidation and fear.
Schools face a similar challenge – the right of parents to criticise and offer opinions, to shape the direction of the school even, balanced against the way campaigns on social media can escalate into something very ugly. I want to focus here on harassment against staff in school by adults. Three quarters of our members have received threats of violence from adult members of the school community and one in five of those were conveyed through social media. The BBC reports that a third of calls to the Professionals Online Safety Helpline concern online threats.
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