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.
Is anybody surprised by this? They send comedians to literal jail for teaching their girlfriend’s pug how to do the nazi salute as a joke (to razz girlfriend a little and probably for views, I mean he is a comedian, they like views.) They drive around in vans hoping to “nick” you for not having a license to watch television, used to drive around in vans scanning for radios and doing the same back in the day too. Of course they’re monitoring the teachers, they’re probably monitoring everyone else too!