Primary school public Instagram account

[Hellogoodbyehowdoyoudo]

I've just come across my son's primary school Instagram account.

It's public. Not private. They share photos of the kids on social media.

Am I the only one who finds that a bit inappropriate?

I signed the consent form to allow his photo to be posted on school platforms, but I thought it was just Class dojo. Which means no one else can see them, only verified school parents.

Maybe I'm being silly. We live in a world of social media. It's the norm.

When you sign the form it’s not just for internal purposes. It includes photos going on the school website etc, accessible to all.
If you’ve changed your mind, contact the school and they’ll make sure no photos of your child are put up there.

Just tell them you’ve changed your mind and don’t want their image sharing.

Withdraw your consent

Ours posts photos on their public website that anyone can see and their Facebook account. If anyone doesn't want their child included they can fill in the form to have them kept off. It's fine.

I completely agree with you! Our son’s school has an open Facebook page which they put pics of students on. I haven’t given consent for any pics of our son apart from the yearly class photo but I just don’t understand why they don’t make the page private

I think I will.

I just don't see the need to have photos of the kids posted on Instagram for all to see?

I can imagine paedos having a right field day searching for primary school accounts on Instagram. Bizarre.

Most schools have a facebook/instagram page where they post things about what the kids are up to and these are open to the public.

At ours if you dont consent to your kid having pic online they will just put a smiley face sticker over the kids face on the photo so cant see them.

Most schools have a website that they post photos on. Some have social media.

if you don’t want it you need to withdraw your permission.

Thankyou for the replies. I'm aware I can withdraw my consent. I just wanted some opinions on whether I'm being silly or overthinking it.

It didn’t worry me, but people feel differently about issues like this. Each to their own. There’s no right or wrong.

What I would say is that schools are hypersensitive about safeguarding, so wouldn’t put anything up that they thought posed any risk to any child or staff member.

I hate it too, I don’t understand why they do it really. There is no real purpose to it.
I didn’t allow consent for photos and the school made me feel like the most awkward person in the world for it.

Because its an advertising platform for their school for recruitment, but mostly they would have to administer the people who can/cannot see it - and how could they verify who was a parent against who wasn't? Who would be going through 1000+ accounts each school year to remove old parents etc?

You can withdraw consent or even just ask that your child isn’t featured on social media posts, and internal/Dojo only (this is the set up I have!)
The social media pages are public as many prospective parents will look at these to get a feel for schools when they are looking in to sending their children to reception, so it’s not as simple as making them private unfortunately.

Nonsense - they're not scanning primary school IG accounts to see crappy photos of kids walking along a road. They're not using that information to kidnap your child.

The danger to your child is actually from your husband, your father, your brother, that "Really nice guy who lives next door and will help us with any odd job"

I wish my school was. I didn’t give them consent to post photos and yet one managed to be put online by them on twitter as it was then, with not only a close up of my child’s face, but their name attached too! I contacted the Head who made me feel like a hysterical woman and didn’t even apologise.

My son is now in secondary school, but I've refused consent on his photograph or name being shared publicly on any platform. I've never consented to this, even when he was in Infant/Junior school. Contact the school and tell them, you're withdrawing consent.

That’s really bad. I hope you reported it to the Governors?

I just think Instagram is a bit of an unsavoury place. Full of really ick accounts.

Ok... but it also has lots of great accounts...

I think most schools have this these days. Especially privates that are marketing themselves. In general terms I don’t get the issue really because the type of content is no different to what’s on the website or in the olden days what would have be found in a prospectus. I know it can be an issue for some kids, like my friend’s DD who fled a domestic violence situation but that would apply whether it’s the website or on insta. Your child your choice though, withdraw your consent if you don’t want them featured.

Our primary school gives us a multi consent form every year, which breaks down image sharing into lots of different categories, including internal school notice boards (which I said yes to), website, social media, brochures (which I said no to). They do have plenty of parents who allow their kids photos on social media and they have a fairly active facebook where they share pics of some kids and that's the parent's choice to make. But mine have never been shown, or if it's a group shot, they are blurred out or obscured. It shouldn't be difficult for any school to do this, some kids should never be on social media for good reason.

This is the best idea. Giving parents the option to agree to different platforms

Yeah loads of super duper accounts

Well it does. Mine is full of interesting and funny stuff.

The thing is this is a bloody nightmare for teachers. You have 30 kids in your class. Little Tommy can go in the newsletter but not Instagram. Little Timmy can't go in either. Little Betty can't have her photo up on a display board. So if you upload a photo you are spending time you don't have searching for kids and cropping them out. Then you have parents changing their mind mid year.

It should be a simple yes or no. Or at the most a yes or no to internal/ external photos.