Two online harm researchers accessed pornography, sexualised animal content, and information about self-harm on school-issued iPads at six Auckland primary schools in an experiment.
Two online harm researchers accessed pornography, sexualised animal content, and information about self-harm on school-issued iPads at six Auckland primary schools in an experiment.
Jo Robertson and Holly Brooker found harmful content on school-issued iPads despite blocking technology
Network for Learning, funded with $33 million this year, blocks sites but can’t filter specific content
There are concerns current protections are inadequate, emphasising the need for more robust online safety measures
Two online harm researchers accessed pornography, sexualised animal content, and information about self-harm on school-issued iPads at six Auckland primary schools in an experiment they described as “horrific”.
The content was accessed despite all the schools having blocking technology provided by a Crown-owned technology company, which received more than $33million in government funding this year.
Jo Robertson, a sex therapist, and Holly Brooker, a parenting educator and former high school teacher, visited four primary schools in person to run tests on school-issued iPads and laptops and asked staff at another two schools to carry out the same tests.
The pair, who campaign for better protection against harmful online content through their non-government organisation Makes Sense, say the experiment shows the current system is failing to keep children safe.
“I’ve seen porn content, fully nude people. I’ve seen videos and images about suicide on school devices, student devices and sometimes logged into student accounts,” Robertson told the Herald.
Holly Brooker and Jo Robertson have tested internet-blocking technology at primary schools and found current systems do not prevent students from accessing porn and suicide clips. Photo / Michael Craig
Brooker said what she found was disturbing and accessing the content was simple.
“I did a deep dive and looked at all sorts of types of content and it was horrific. I was shocked and I was really disappointed. I saw content like sexual content, I saw eating disorder content. I saw content around self-harm. I saw content around predator behaviour.”
More than 2500 schools and kura – most schools in New Zealand – get internet services, security and online safety systems from government-funded company Network for Learning or N4L.
N4L declined a request for an interview but in a statement, CEO Larrie Moore said N4L has a “baseline” service that blocks 17 categories of websites.
Larrie Moore, the CEO of Network for Learning, said the company blocked 12.6 billion attempts to access websites deemed inappropriate in the past year. Photo / Supplied
He said N4L could block any specific website a school requested, like YouTube. It could also block categories such as social media.
However, he said the company can’t block specific content within those websites.
“N4L can block entire websites (like nzherald.co.nz or cnn.com) but not specific content, videos, or images within those websites (like images or videos depicting violence in Gaza or Ukraine),” he said.
Moore said in the past year N4L blocked 12.6 billion attempts to access websites deemed inappropriate or distracting by schools.
However, Robertson said the current offering is not providing adequate protection.
“We have a government-funded service, and no significant questions are being asked around the performance of that.”
She said students using devices at schools for learning should be kept safe.
Brooker said many teachers assumed current systems did protect students.
“There is an assumption that the platforms are safe, that the devices are safe and they’re not,” she said.
She said it should not be up to teachers to oversee everything students access to on devices in class.
“Principals and teachers are incredibly busy, working on the front line with kids all day, they can’t manage what’s happening on screens for kids. I was a teacher I know how unrealistic that is.”
The president of the Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand, Vaughan Couillault, said students accessing inappropriate material online is not a new issue but it’s becoming “significantly harder” to prevent.
SPANZ president Vaughan Couillault is also principal of Auckland's Papatoetoe High School. Photo / Dean Purcell
Couillault, also principal at Papatoetoe High School, said the service N4L provides all schools in New Zealand is critical.
He said the N4L helped stop a “barrage” of harmful material. However, he acknowledged there were limitations as N4L was mainly a site-specific blocker.
“Unless you’re investing tens of millions of dollars it’s never going to be good enough. We’ve got to make do with what we’ve got and make improvements and suggestions as we go.”
He said N4L do what they can with the funding they’re provided by the Education Ministry.
“Inappropriate content can get into people’s hands and what that content is, is rapidly changing so we are going to have to do better in that space,” he said.
He emphasised that it can’t be up to staff to be on top of everything students are doing on devices while on school networks.
“We (principals and teachers) don’t have the bandwidth to also be cyber security technicians.”
Porn accessed in NZ schools ‘every three minutes’
Saunil Hagler, the New Zealand Education Director of Linewize, another internet filtering business, said New Zealand stacks up well when it comes to basic online protections at schools.
He said Linewize is used by around 20% of schools in New Zealand as an additional layer of specialised protection.
Saunil Hagler is the NZ Education Director from online safety company, Linewize. Photo / Ben Dickens
“We can’t block our way to a safer internet but there needs to be a lot more that’s done than basic level filtering. And one of the key things is visibility,” he said.
He said Linewize offers real-time alerts that can notify principals, teachers or parents as soon as harmful material is accessed on a school-issued device or even on a student’s own device that’s using the school network.
The alerts extend to anything inappropriate which might be mentioned in an email, or in a shared document like a Google document.
Hagler said their analytics show searches for adult content is picked up every three minutes at New Zealand schools, including at primary school level.
“These then become flagged in the monitoring system so the school can see what searches were conducted, by whom, when. Terms like ‘porn’ and ‘pornhub’ are very common terms that trigger the flag,” he said.
Asked whether 5- to 10-year-olds were actively trying to find inappropriate content, Hagler said they were.
In another alarming statistic, he said almost every week, urgent calls were made to schools due to concerns a child could be at risk.
“These are very vulnerable individuals that are going to the internet and asking it, ‘how do I kill myself’ in some cases,” he said.
He says a new tool using AI will soon be available which automatically blurs anything turning up on a screen that might be deemed inappropriate.
He said children are far more at risk now than they were 10 years ago through either accessing harmful content deliberately or stumbling across it while surfing the internet.
“I think the challenge has been that over the last 10 years, there perhaps hasn’t been a sufficient driver to allow schools to seek the best when it comes to what is possible to better protect young people online.”
Education Ministry and Minister respond
The Education Ministry told the Herald it provided a “base appropriation” to N4L of $33.652m this year for internet, cyber security and safety protections for New Zealand schools and kura.
The ministry’s chief digital officer, Stuart Wakefield, said N4L provides a range of advanced internet filtering and protection services.
“It is our expectation that the service has all of the facilities and capabilities for schools to be as permissive or restrictive as they wish,” he said.
However, N4L’s Larrie Moore said the technical capabilities of its web filtering system are chosen to “meet the Ministry’s requirements”.
The Herald asked the Ministry about the experiment by Robertson and Brooker, emphasising that pornography and information about suicide was accessed with ease on school-issued devices.
Wakefield acknowledged that firewalls and filters are often not enough, but said the only 100% safe option is to not provide internet to children at all.
“Given that we (and schools) see benefit in using digital services and internet content to support learning, we provide a range of funded options for schools to help keep students safe from harm,” he said.
This included the N4L website and category blocking technology, Netsafe educational resources and special software licences that provide additional controls for Google and Microsoft.
But Robertson said parents and schools should expect more.
“Surely a government-funded internet provider that is doing filtering in schools to keep students safe is actually doing that. It’s a low-level filtering offering and we need a much more robust system to keep our kids safe,” she said.
Education Minister Erica Stanford. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Education Minister Erica Stanford told the Herald she was aware N4L could not block inappropriate content within platforms like Facebook or YouTube.
She expected social media companies to monitor this.
“We rely on Facebook and YouTube to monitor and remove the content or respond to requests for its removal,” she said.
“It is my expectation schools make informed decisions about what students can access, especially considering the minimum age requirements for sites like Facebook and YouTube. I have asked the Ministry of Education to remind schools of their responsibilities and the options available when it comes to keeping young people safe online.”
YouTube has terms and conditions that state children under 13 should not use the platform without a guardian or a caregiver’s consent.
Robertson said expecting YouTube to monitor and remove harmful content was like taking a “fingers-crossed” approach given the vast amount of material that’s constantly uploaded.
“We have written a letter to the Minister of Education and we’re really keen to talk with her about all of the gaps and the issues that we’ve seen and I’m hoping that she will be on board with that and willing to make changes.”
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won the best coverage of a major news event at the 2024 Voyager NZ Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald’s video team in July 2024.
