about teachers' personal twitter pages

[Rylanmakesmyheartsmile]

First off let me say that I genuinely don't know if I'm being unreasonable here or not - I just know the whole situation doesn't quite sit right with me and I'd like to garner some other (hopefully rational) opinions.

Our primary school has recently (in the last year or so) set up a school twitter page. I am not on twitter myself, but can see the school page so keep it open on a tab on my phone so I can easily find it again. They post probably 4/5 days out of 7 and sometimes several times a day. It includes reminders about things (which are often not sent in any other way like groupcall messages or email hence the need to keep an eye on the twitter page), photos of activities in classes, retweets from other organisations and schools etc etc.

This is all ok - I have to say that I don't love twitter and I'm not personally sure of the need for it (we also have a school website with class blogs which are (for the most part) updated regularly - some daily), but I admit that I'm not the most tech-savvy and bar MN and FB - I don't do any other kind of social media, don't use Snapchat or any of these other things.

My question however is that the school twitter page contains a fair number of retweets from some teachers' personal twitter pages - these are definitely personal pages and having looked at a few of them, they definitely include plenty that's not to do with the school. These retweets (and it's probably important to say that having looked more closely - I would say for every post which is retweeted there is another one which isn't), are about what's going on in the school and include videos and photos of the kids. Things like a school trip to a museum, or a video of the class doing an exercise routine for sport relief, or pictures of the kids with artwork they had done for a specific project. (These are all examples which have come up this past weekend.)

Is this ok? I know we sign a form at the start of the school year saying we are happy for our kids' photos to be used on the website etc but I feel like teachers' personal twitter pages are something else.

I KNOW that barring any issues with children who aren't allowed to be photographed (and I'm not suggesting that these at risk children are included in these photos), there isn't any harm to it (I don't think) but it still just sits uncomfortably with me.

Is this normal? Am I just a dinosaur?

None of my DC are in the classes whose teachers do this, however my DTs have a 50% chance of being in one of the most prolific poster's classes next year.

I don't know - it just doesn't sit right with me, and seems so at odds with all the info which we are pushing on or kids (rightly so) about internet safety etc.

Wakeup - how rude! It's certainly not as boring as your post which does not move the discussion on at all.

Re tweeting school twitter posts is fine but if they are creating their own tweets about school/pupils that is an issue and needs to be addressed.

The school trip bit could be a safe guarding issue, as it is announcing where children are going to be but if that information is already on the website then it’s already in the public domain.

For me the issue is if you wanted a tweet taken down for any reason in the future. Tweets remain searchable. The school have control over their own Twitter account, but not over the personal staff accounts. They could have left the school and be difficult to contact.

It's more appropriate to use the school account for the original and to retweet from their own account.

it's one thing to be concerned about your own child because you have genuine valid reasons, and ask for confirmation that the permission (or exclusion) you've signed is being applied.
Another entirely to be bothered because some random children that are not yours from the same school appear in some blurry group photo wearing their uniform.

I'm a primary teacher, I can't understand why any teacher would be posting class pictures on their personal twitter accounts. As PPs have said, a class teacher account would be different but school pics mixed in with tweets about their social lives etc seems inappropriate to me. I can't imagine people doing it on Facebook so how is twitter any different.

I would feel uncomfortable about the teachers' personal accounts being used for school stuff if photos or names of children are used. Parents have given permission for photos to be used on school platforms. Even if the consent form wasn't specific about this, I think it's ok to assume that the photos aren't going to be used elsewhere. If people then retweet, it's still clear that it's from an official school account.

Don't schools have to cover identifying kids on newsletters and social media in their safeguarding policy? For example my children's school never caption photos with names, and only first names are given elsewhere. I think social media use also gets a mention in the home-school agreements, can't remember exactly what they say, but stuff like parents and teachers shouldn't be 'friends' on FB.

I would not be happy about important school info being sent by Twitter. Not everyone is on Twitter or wants to check it for school info, and do they really want the whole world to know what's going on in the school on a particular day? Couldn't they send an email to parents instead? I think schools more commonly use twitter for PR - to raise the school's profile and show off about trips, fancy equipment, exam and sports results, visits from authors, etc, rather than for real communication.

In that case OP it's really poor practice even if innocent and I'm amazed it's allowed by SLT. It certainly wouldn't be in my school. If I were you I'd raise it with the head.

I seriously doubt they are using their personal Twitter. It seems more likely that they have MrX and MrsX accounts which are linked to the main school account. They probably do use their own devices but do in app photos without leaving a copy on their camera roll.

Most teachers have personal Twitter accounts that are anonymous and use a pseudonym.

"At the very least, you gave the school permission to use photographs. You did not give the teachers in their capacity as private individuals permission, which is why most schools insist on using school devices for school photos for school publications."

Anyone can retweet anything on Twitter. If I see a photo on Twitter, I can retweet it, no permission required.

"For me the issue is if you wanted a tweet taken down for any reason in the future. Tweets remain searchable. The school have control over their own Twitter account, but not over the personal staff accounts. They could have left the school and be difficult to contact. "

Anybody can retweet so that's not a valid argument at all. You have to go on the basis that anything on Twitter is in the public domain forever.

These teacher may also have anonymous/pseudonym profiles stargirl but these accounts definitely also include a lot of personal posts intermingled with school stuff.

I like that they seem to really love the school and have good relationships with the kids - these are definitely the teachers who would stop and chat to your dc if you saw them out and about at the weekend - but the mix of private and personal seems wrong to me, and as a pp said upthread - parents have given the school permission to reproduce images - not individual teachers.

I think it's a fine line between fostering good relationships and using social media to include parents in their children's education, and being either unprofessional or inappropriately sharing images of children which aren't yours.

I really do appreciate all the opinions

And as I said before - I fully accept that I am likely being unreasonable

"inappropriately sharing images of children which aren't yours."

Again, anyone can retweet school photos from Twitter, doesn't have anything to do with the children being yours or not. If my local school posts a photo fo the children doing something interesting, I could re-tweet it even though the school is nothing to do with me. It's almost like you don't understand how Twitter works.

I think there is a real issue here but am not certain what the right route to deal with it would be. In your shoes the outcome I'd want to see is a review of "how to use social media safely", probably targetting both teachers and parents (separately or together), with an updating of policies on how and where pictures are published, and when it is ok to have names with them. What you describe sounds like there is a lack of understanding of the importance of not having named photos of children freely publicly online with school details etc.

I don't see the big deal, or the risk to be honest.
It is hardly breaking a big secret that a school will have children in it.

Lichtie The issue is whether, when a teacher is using their private twitter account to tweet school pictures, those pictures have been through the school's vetting process to ensure they don't include any children without the relevant permissions.

Some children don't have permissions to be on social media in the school uniform as it makes their location identifiable. eg adopted children or those fleeing domestic violence.

See also all the 'school nativity photos' threads in December.

"The issue is whether, when a teacher is using their private twitter account to tweet school pictures, those pictures have been through the school's vetting process to ensure they don't include any children without the relevant permissions."

Why is this any different to the photos on the school's Twitter page? And this was not the OP's original issue. She was against teachers re-tweeting from the school Twitter account for no clear reason.

Photos on the school's twitter page can reasonably be expected to have gone through the schools appropriate safeguarding checks wrt children without permissions.

Photos on a teacher's private twitter might well not have been through those checks. It is worth asking that question.

Furthermore, people give permission for the school to use images on social media. They do not, generally, give permission for teachers to use those images on their private (ie not professional) accounts.

And this was not the OP's original issue. She was against teachers re-tweeting from the school Twitter account for no clear reason.

It was the opposite - the school's official Twitter account is retweeting what appear to be the teachers' personal accounts, which include images of the children.

Actually OP, this may be good news to you but your school's Twitter account may well undergo some changes very soon (if not completely go) when the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) come into force this May.
The fines will be far too huge for any organisation, especially schools to ignore. Therefore, they will need to have a policy in place that states how they plan to safeguard all personal data and it may be, that they cannot truly safeguard all data such as photos on this account and therefore, have to close the twitter account down.
Am currently going through my own school's situation with regards to GDPR and even our BBC School News Report on Youtube may have to be looked at!

I wrote a policy on this very subject as a Safeguarding Lead at the secondary Academy I work at. We have school twitter feeds that share good news, information or things the school community may find of interest. If an individual subject area wants to tweet separately, they must register with our IT dept and share the password with them for monitoring purposes. The Head of Department has responsibility to monitor the content. They must also register with their school email address. Personal twitter accounts of teachers must not be followed by parents/students nor must they follow students. We strongly advise teachers and support staff to lock down their personal accounts in order to safeguard themselves. You are right to question this situation, and it is one lots of schools are having to address at the moment.

I'm really quite surprised at the laid-back, 'it's fiiiiiine' consensus of this thread. I completely agree that OP needs to request the social media policy and clarify whether the teachers' accounts are personal or school-affiliated.

Ideally, images of children and other school-related information should only be tweeted from official school accounts, with the details and passwords held in school. It works well to have accounts associated with posts rather than individuals, so that rather like the @POTUS and @10DowningStreet accounts they pass from post-holder to post-holder. So you might have a central school account, one for the headteacher, and one for each class. The details must be held officially in school so that if the account is hacked, or if Mr. Smith's friends think it's hilarious to pinch his phone on a stag do and retweet a load of Britain First videos, or if Mrs. Jones gets pissed one night and goes off on a Twitter rant at John Lewis, the content can be removed quickly. School accounts should only be used for school business or related activity, such as sharing of resources or a news story relevant to the curriculum.

If the accounts are totally personal to the teacher then the policy should advise them to protect their tweets, although the teacher may choose not to. If the bio mentions that they work at Anytown Primary then it also needs a disclaimer that opinions expressed are personal. If something newsworthy happens at the school (tragedy, allegation against member of staff, allegations of financial misconduct etc) then journalists will go straight to the Twitter accounts of the school and of the staff and there will be nothing to stop them quoting anything they like.

Big corporations are very savvy to all of this. My sister works in a large City law firm; the social media rules are ironclad and failure to follow them is a sackable offence. There's another thread in AIBU right now where OP has been questioned about content on her personal Twitter account.

If nothing else, the school needs to set an example to the children of how social media use for professional purposes needs to differ from personal use. It sounds like the school in the OP has not drawn these boundaries.

I'm more shocked at the fact that teachers are linking their personal accounts (if indeed that's what they are) to the official school account than by the retweeting of photos. That in itself is a recipe for disaster IMO.

"Ideally, images of children and other school-related information should only be tweeted from official school accounts"

But anyone can re-tweet so what difference does it make?