CBSE issues guidelines to keep students away from porn

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has issued a number of guidelines for safe usage of internet in schools and school buses, which include deploying surveillance and making children use internet in “highly-visible” areas.

The guidelines which have been prepared after consultation with cyber safety experts are aimed at protecting children from cyber bullying and preventing them from accessing pornographic content. 

In order to block pornographic content from schools, the central government was earlier toying with the idea of installing jammers in schools, however that was not possible because a number of teaching progammes for school children are internet based these days. Installing jammers would have meant no access to educational material as well.

“Schools need to promote a safe and secure educational environment for effective teaching and learning and to discourage students from actions detrimental to themselves, their peers and the value system. Schools are, thus, advised to take measures to pre-empt any inappropriate and illegal activity through IT enabled devices in schools,” the circular sent by CBSE to all schools on August 18 read.

The Board wants schools to educate students for the safe and effective use of the internet, install effective firewalls, filtering and monitoring software mechanisms in all the computers and regularly review filtering and blocking policies and procedures.

It further wants schools to allow children to access only pre-selected websites appropriate to their age group.