Ofsted’s Annual Report released

  • Ofsted’s annual report, which ran from September 2021 to August 2022, has been released, describing the extent of which education and children’s social care has recovered post-pandemic.
  • Findings concluded that the recovery from the pandemic is still a ‘work in progress’.
  • Staff shortages have been described as ‘compounding’ difficulties in education and social care.
  • They say that children have lacked stability and security in recent years due to a high staff absences and turnover.
  • For the full report, go to the GOV.UK website.

Meta releases an open-source tool which scans for abusive content

  • Meta has shared their new open-source tool that can help in combatting child exploitation, terrorist propaganda and other types of abusive content.
  • The tool is called Hasher-Matcher-Actioner (HMA).
  • It will assist platforms to identify copies of images or videos so they can take action on them in bulk.
  • The more companies which participate in the HMA database, the better and more comprehensive it will become, as users move between platforms.
  • This tool comes with Meta assuming the chair of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s Operating Board next month.
  • For more, go to the Engadget and Meta websites.

YouTube will send a notification to users if their comment is abusive

  • YouTube have attempted to mitigate toxic and hateful comments on their platform.
  • They will be introducing a new feature that will nudge users if their comments contain abusive content while broader action is taken.
  • If a user is in violation of the platform’s rules, they will receive a notification following removal of those comments.
  • If the user persists in posting abusive comments, YouTube will issue a ban from posting any more comments for 24 hours.
  • YouTube have said, “Our goal is to both protect creators from users trying to negatively impact the community via comments, as well as offer more transparency to users who may have had comments removed to policy violations and hopefully help them understand our Community Guidelines.”
  • For more on this story, please visit the Tech Crunch website.

Childline counselling sessions up to 40% as children worry about living costs

  • From April 2021 to March 2022, Childline provided 1,242 counselling sessions, all while facing a shortage of volunteers.
  • This is a 40% increase over the past three years.
  • Childline have stated that children have concerns relating to jobs and money. They say that these worries are fuelled by financial pressures resulting from the cost-of-living crisis.
  • Between April and November this year, numbers of volunteers drop from 65 to 54 in the Belfast branch and 66 to 54 in the Foyle branch.
  • Whilst the numbers of children phoning the service have increased across the board, there has been a high increase in counselling sessions for children under 11, which have risen by 38% compared to three years ago.
  • For more on this story, please visit the ITV News website.