Exclusive:'Our kids were put at risk': New safety breach sees children exposed to porn in school

It has been more than a week since East Lothian Council shut down Google Workspace after it was discovered teenagers had used the system to share pornography.

It is believed a group of S4 boys from Dunbar Grammar used access to the email service Gmail to send inappropriate images that were rapidly shared among the wider school community.

Despite IT staff moving quickly to shut down the system just 16 minutes after the first email was sent, the problem had already become “large scale”.

The software remains switched off, with an East Lothian Council spokeswoman saying work had continued over the weekend to attempt to rectify the problem.

One father-of-two, whose daughter goes to Dunbar Grammar, said parents felt let down after having been made promises about safety.

He said: “This was promoted as a great help for pupils and lots of assurances were given about safety. As any parent of a teenager will know, it does not take long for them to work out how to bypass any restriction.

“Kids as young as 11 are getting exposed to this risk on laptops they have to carry to school and back every day, and now they’re not even getting to use this supposedly great tool while the council inevitably struggles to understand what it clearly didn’t plan for.”

A council spokeswoman said “unfortunately” the shutdown had been “an essential move to carry out a recall and delete of materials”.

The issue first came to light at 11.32am on Thursday, September 25, when East Lothian Council’s IT team became aware of a large-scale email chain that was being used by pupils to share material.

The council said the first email had been sent at 11.24am and access to Gmail was switched off at 11.40am.

A council spokeswoman said: “After our initial immediate response to stop the spread of the messages, work has continued to recall and delete the large volume of emails sent during this brief period.”

She said staff were working across weekends and evenings to reinstate the system, but it first had to be “completed and checked”. It was expected the system would be back up and running by Friday, but the checks took longer than planned.

Staff email was unaffected, but new lessons plans and access to learning had to be drawn up to ensure classes could continue without the software.

“We are making good progress with re-enabling access to Google Workspace and work will continue over this weekend,” the council spokeswoman said. “The system remains inaccessible to learners until this work completes.”

The parent, who asked not to be named, said the situation had called into question the council’s ability to keep pupils safe.

The father said: “It raises questions about the council’s ability to safeguard young children in school and it has put teachers in an equally frustrating position while lesson plans are ripped up and basic access to school work and updates have been disrupted for days.”

A second parent, who works in a senior IT position, said he was “not surprised” the issue had occurred in the local authority.

He said: “East Lothian don't block known sources of porn that other councils have, and they have no digital risk management document so it seems they haven't thought properly about child safety.

“Instant group messaging, including email, is a dangerous tool to give children. It's like giving them a Taser that can give an instant electric shock to a postal district of children.”

However, the East Lothian spokeswoman rebutted the claim.

She said: “We implement multiple layers of protection for content blocking on and out of school premises when a pupil is using ELC managed/issued Chromebooks and use industry-standard filtering solutions to block content, which includes pornography, with filters updated frequently.

“We also maintain a rigorous on-premises filtering solution with the same stringent ruleset for personal devices on our guest wifi networks. We do not disclose technical details/providers for IT security purposes.

“Information security and data protection is included within our corporate risk register.”

The situation comes after The Scotsman last week revealed pupils as young as seven in Glasgow and Borders council areas had access to pornography on school-issued iPads.

Despite both councils initially saying it was not possible to do so, pupils were able to turn off safeguards on the devices and access inappropriate websites.