Do you really know what your students are doing online? The answer is…no. You aren’t even close to knowing what they are up to.
Are you on their Discord? Their WhatsApp group chat? Their game server chat? The possibilities are endless. Even the eternal paranoia that teachers must maintain when it comes to safeguarding children online cannot keep pace with the changes in technology and resources available for no cost to the average teenager.
Last term my school was fortunate enough to take part in a pilot program, organised by the South West Regional Cyber Crime Unit (SWRCCU), aimed at identifying promising and at risk children who could be taking part in, or being affected by, cybercrime. We were one of 11 educational establishments that put hundreds of children from each school in front of police officers, security officers, IT professionals and even cyber security graduates to show them the light and the dark sides of cyber security.
Can you spot a cybercriminal?
Of the pupils who took part in the scheme, 67 per cent admitted that they would or may have already committed a cybercrime. Fourteen individuals (not from our school) were identified as needing further police interaction, for reasons such as hacking school networks, databases or websites. On average, each school will have at least one teenage cybercriminal in it per hundred pupils. Do you know who they are? Do they look alike? What are you doing about it if you do know?
And there’s some more bad news: not much is happening as a result of these statistics. Try reading the Crown Prosecution Service’s guidance for prosecuting cybercrime, all 26 pages of it.
Estimates by the Office for National Statistics in 2016 placed around two thirds of all reported fraud and computer misuse crimes as “cybercrime”. It’s rising quickly, and prosecution rates are not high, with few reported cybercrimes resulting in any form of conviction.
People, including kids, think they will get away with committing cybercrimes and the statistics suggest that, largely, they will.
Training in cyber security
But it’s not all doom and gloom. The SWRCCU is one of several organisations with a plan. Namely, get these kids interested and involved in rewarding and meaningful education programmes. They have already trialled this locally to good effect, which means that no further action is required from a policing perspective. Children are being mentored into apprenticeships and career plans via the Cyber Futures Initiative with more information available from Digital Defenders.
More good news: employers are literally crying out for talented and motivated young people to join their apprenticeship schemes. Several companies are considering replacing graduate schemes with 18+ apprenticeship programmes, such is the number of vacancies that are going unfilled.
So, get your techy students to start looking for summer schools run by the National Cyber Security Centre. Get them attending open days and practising online training in cyber security. Give them the tools they need to satisfy their curiosity in a safe and controlled environment.
Most of all, show them that you can and will trust them to do the right thing, not by forcing them to experiment in isolation because you have banned YouTube in school.
Accept that you won’t ever know everything that your pupils get up to online. But if you give them a chance, they might just surprise you with what they can achieve.
Jonathan Torbitt is director of IT and computer science at Rendcomb College in Gloucestershire. He tweets @Jon_Torbitt
