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.

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

Exactly. Which is why I think the Twitter account may be no more soon!

The teacher should not upload pupils photos to theirvown accounts. However, retweeting the schools official post is no different to a parent doing it.

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

Anyone could take a photograph of your child in the street and tweet it but they generally don’t because it’s inappropriate. Teachers and schools have to be more sensitive than most people and organisations on this topic. It’s inappropriate for children’s images to appear on teachers’ personal twitter feeds.

Teachers - or indeed any school employee - ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be posting identifiable information including photographs of ANY students from THEIR OWN social media accounts.

Absolute no-no and complete breach of data protection. As in, you gave your permission to THE SCHOOL to use images NOT a private individual who happens to work there to plaster it all over their social media.

If, however, the SCHOOL is posting stuff in the first place and staff retweeting or sharing then fair enough. EXTREMELY bad form for the staff not to have watertight security on their social media though, at my school we are expected to be unsearchable and I only have my current fb profile pic in public view. We are not allowed to take pics of the kids without a very good reason and if the school publishes pics they are cross-referenced against a huge list of no-permission names.

I'd be ABSOLUTELY FUMING at this and not just in a mumsnet way. Ask for a copy of the social media policy, photographic permission policy and request an appointment with the data protection and safeguarding officers.

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

Say @LeafyPrimary tweets a photo of Year Two holding up their cardboard models of the Angel of the North. It's actually Mrs Smith, y2 teacher, who logged on and uploaded the picture during her lunch "break" on Friday. Three doting parents retweet it, as does Mrs Smith from her @MrsSmithYearTwo account, and the intern manning the official @AngelOfTheNorth account.

At 4.30pm the head teacher realises that a Looked After Child has sneaked into shot. Panic stations! Head logs in and deletes the tweet.

The parents' and teacher's retweets now read e.g. "Charlie's class 😍😍😍 [the quoted Tweet is no longer available]"

If Mrs Smith had tweeted straight from her personal account @katyproseccoqueen then the head couldn't have deleted it even if she had seen it. Would she really review every tweet by every member of staff from their private accounts multiple times a day?

Yes, screenshots exist, but the question was about how a retweet differs from a tweet.

so if you delete the original, do all the rretweets disappear too? (I don't do twitface)

I'm quite surprised people are so chilled out about this (and I'm a teacher).

Teacher having an account and retweeting from the school one - fine in my opinion (I've shared things from our school facebook before).

Teachers uploading original content (which has identifying images of pupils) and the school retweeting it - not fine in my opinion.

If the teacher accounts are sharing 'here's a lovely piece of work' or something like that, then you are being a bit unreasonable.

If the staff are sharing photoa of children, I would say that's not on and actually an esafety issue.

so if you delete the original, do all the rretweets disappear too? (I don't do twitface)

Sort of. The original tweet appears in a box within the retweet, like a quotation. Any comment you put on it will still be there, but the quotation box bit will just be greyed out and replaced with the words "this tweet is no longer available" or something.

Imagine this post but with the bolded section tipp-exed out!

Doubtful its the teachers private twitter account.

I have school twitter and 'my' twitter. No offense, but when Im at home I don't think about school twitter!

Today my own DD had sports day. I just saw a photo of her on facebook - its been liked by 70+ people. Not taken by the school but by another mum who was focusing on her own daughter, and seemed to forget about the others around her.

But that's fine I guess as long as its not a teacher doing it.