By the time they leave primary school, many have already come across online narratives that blur the line between fact and fiction.
The curriculum and assessment review called for primary pupils to be taught media literacy and to understand the techniques used to distort information.
In a similar vein, the latest keeping children safe in education guidance explicitly highlights conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation as safeguarding concerns.
This shift in the policy climate creates an important responsibility for schools. We need to equip pupils for the online world they already inhabit, while introducing these ideas in a way that is age-appropriate rather than alarming.
There is a strong imperative for teaching this in primary schools.
The Pears’ Commission Into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools found that 91 per cent of 11-year-olds have a smart phone and 77 per cent of 11- to 12-year-olds use social media, despite the minimum age for many platforms being set to 13. If we wait until secondary school, it is already too late.
During our recent inset days, we looked at the issues raised by conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation through a safeguarding lens.
Raising whole-staff awareness is first step
Primary colleagues had meaningful discussions within the context of their own settings, exploring key terminology, how these topics can be introduced sensitively in classrooms, and what to do if a child presents with related safeguarding concerns.
Raising whole-staff awareness is an important first step, and we will continue to return to this area as the year progresses.
Unlike curriculum areas that focus on factual information, such as knowing capital cities or how electricity flows around a circuit, this topic is much more complex in that it can touch on the personal beliefs of family members or other trusted adults, or the types of content they are seeing online.
In isolation this work could be seen as tokenistic and superficial. But there are many areas of the curriculum where pupils can develop the skills they need around media literacy.
We are embedding teaching of this topic into Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE), RE and computing classes.
For example, year 4 pupils learn about fake news, clickbait, and what is appropriate to share on social media.
This is built upon in year 6 when pupils learn about the influence of social media in more depth – how different news outlets report on conflict, how social media has an impact on our lives, and how what we see online can affect our personal views.
Tailoring PSHE lessons
From Early Years Foundation Stage onwards, PSHE lessons are tailored to develop independence of thought in each child, to support a confidence in one own’s view whilst respecting the views of others who may have a different belief.
Our RE curriculum has been written to be a mix of theology, philosophy and sociology to explore the substantive concepts we have chosen to teach.
In addition to discrete units about world religions, pupils also study how religion may affect a person’s view of what is right and wrong, and how people of no faith navigate moral and ethical dilemmas.
These lessons contribute to educating respectful, open-minded, well-informed pupils.
Our computing curriculum has been planned in such a way that the final lesson of each half term has an online safety focus, so pupils learn how to keep themselves safe online and how to report any worries they might face when using technology.
As school leaders, we are also continuously looking to develop and improve our curriculum so that it evolves in line with what the children might be exposed to outside school.
This is frighteningly challenging within the realms of the ever-evolving online world.
While we can do our best to shield our pupils from conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation, we cannot pretend they will not be exposed to potentially harmful things online.
To offer the best possible support and protection, early teaching in primary schools is likely our best defence.
We mustn’t shy away from difficult topics but instead we should approach them in a sensitive, age-appropriate way – this is why we are so delighted to see the government take proactive steps in its response to the curriculum and assessment Review.
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