“Digital literacy should be the fourth pillar of a child’s education alongside reading, writing and mathematics”.
“No child should leave school without an adequate standard of digital literacy”.
These are just two of the quotes from the recently published House of Lords report ‘Growing up with the internet’. The report acknowledges the benefits the Internet can bring, but highlights the associated risks it is leaving our children vulnerable to.
Making a number of requests of Government, the report includes the suggestion to establish of a Children’s Digital Champion at the centre of the Cabinet Office to advocate on behalf of children across all Government departments.
The report also requests common-sense changes to how related industries should function, indicating that minimum standards should require that the strictest privacy settings should be ‘on’ by default, geolocation should be switched off until activated, and privacy and geolocation settings must not change during either manual or automatic system upgrades.
Raising parental awareness of issues and how to protect children online is examined, with a request for regular public campaigns to promote information and tools to help with this. The report suggests that ‘a campaign with a short memorable message, similar to the Green Cross Code, should be developed’.
A summary of the report can be read here.
To learn how the OSA can help make digital literacy the fourth pillar of education within your own establishment, please read more about our Certificate of Online Safety.