Two weeks ago, The Guardian revealed how the Department for Education is monitoring the social media activity of some of the country’s leading education experts. Now evidence has emerged that the monitoring is much more widespread, covering even the lowest paid members of staff.
Ordinary teaching and support staff said this weekend that they were “gobsmacked” and angry after discovering that the department had files on them. Many outraged educators have rushed to submit subject access requests [SARs] compelling the DfE to release any information it holds under their name, after discovering there were files up to 60 pages long about their tweets and comments challenging government policy or the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Many outraged educators have rushed to submit subject access requests [SARs] compelling the DfE to release any information it holds under their name, after discovering there were files up to 60 pages long about their tweets and comments challenging government policy or the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.
Cleveland expressed anger that while the department was flagging tweets about schools struggling to balance their budgets, meet the growing needs of pupils without enough staff and deal with unreasonable demands from Ofsted, “nothing has changed”.
The Observer’s story a fortnight ago revealed how the DfE tried to cancel a conference because two of its speakers, early-years experts Ruth Swailes and Aaron Bradbury, had previously been critical of government policy.
This echoes their tactics with Swailes and Bradbury, who assumed that the reason the DfE wanted them to speak on Zoom and not in person was so that officials could “cut us off if they didn’t like what we were saying”.
Another key speaker, Julie Harmieson, director of education and strategy at training organisation Trauma Informed Schools, pulled out in solidarity.
Asked whether they were monitoring the social media of teaching staff, the DfE said it would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases and that it was standard practice to carry out due diligence before engaging external experts.
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