Coroner criticises web filtering tips for schools after girl’s suicide

‘The guidelines require updating and are insufficiently robust to ensure their effectiveness’

SCHOOL internet filtering guidance is “not robust enough” to protect children from suicide material online, a coroner has warned the Education Secretary.

Nadhim Zahawi has been told that his department’s advice to head teachers is “outdated” and needs overhauling following the death of a 15-year-old schoolgirl who took her life after viewing suicide stories at school. Coroner Karen Henderson said that the inquest of Frances Thomas, who was known as Frankie, had raised serious questions about how schools blocked and filtered harmful online content.

In a prevention of future death report published yesterday, Ms Henderson said: “The guidelines issued by the Department for Education [DFE] require updating and are insufficiently robust to ensure their effectiveness and meet the changing demands of internet e-security in schools.” The Government must now formally respond to the coroner’s findings.

The DFE gives schools basic guidelines on filtering, but largely leaves it to head teachers to decide what software they use and what it blocks. During the inquest, the coroner heard that Frankie, who had autism, had been able to use an unfiltered ipad at her school in Surrey to look up harmful material, including stories about suicide on the literary app Wattpad.

After her death in 2018, it was discovered that the last story she read included a character who took their life in the same manner as Frankie did hours later.

During the hearing, David Cross, an educational IT expert, said the DFE only offered head teachers “very loose” and “inadequate” guidance on how to set up an effective filtering system.

In October, Ms Henderson ruled that failings at the Stepping Stones school to filter the ipad and Wattpad to moderate harmful content on its app contributed to Frankie’s death, which was ruled as suicide.

Following the coroner’s report yesterday Judy Thomas, Frankie’s mother, called for ministers to ensure that schools’ filtering systems were independently inspected. She said: “I would like it [school filters] to be actually, physically checked and that it is a requirement that there are filters in the first place, but also that there are alerts sent when people do try to access those things.”

A government spokesman said: “Schools have a legal duty to keep their pupils safe and our statutory safeguarding guidance sets out in detail how we expect them to protect pupils from potentially harmful online material, such as content on suicide or self-harm.”