Fake news stories about schools - including serious allegations against teachers - have been “spreading like wildfire” across social media, TES has learned.
Over recent weeks, controversy has grown over the fake news stories that are widely believed to have played a major role in delivering Donald Trump his shock victory in the US presidential election. Now, headteachers are warning that schools in this country are also being caught up in a trend for sham news articles that is having a damaging effect on school staff, parents and pupils.
They say that the problem of fake stories aimed at their schools, created through “prank” websites, is causing unnecessary concern and taking hours of staff time to rectify.
TES is aware of more than a dozen schools that have fallen victim to hoax articles. Some of the stories, which have been shared online across communities, make serious claims about teachers. One example said that a teacher had taken “selfies” after having sex with a student.
Keziah Featherstone, headteacher at Bridge Learning Campus in Bristol, told TES that children as young as 8 had seen a fake story on social media about a teacher kidnapping a pupil. Some parents also believed it to be true, she added.
Time-consuming
Ms Featherstone, who was warned about the prank story earlier this month, said that dealing with the aftermath had required up to 20 hours’ work a week.
“It has taken up an awful lot of time. It is hours of work. Receptionists have been taking calls from parents and children who don’t understand it’s a prank,” the head of the all-through school added.
Two of the websites (breakingnews247.net and breakingnews365.net) are being misunderstood as real news. They state that they are entertainment sites only at the end of a story page, under a series of related links.
Ms Featherstone said: “We have had a number of parents come in. We still have parents say, ‘It must be true, it’s a news site.’ They haven’t read all the way through.
[The sites’ creators] have done quite a lot to make them seem more believable. It’s very professionally done.”
‘We still have parents say, “It must be true, it’s a news site.” ’
The easy-to-use websites allow users to upload a photo of the school with a headline and short news story. The articles can then be shared instantly to Facebook and Twitter.
Some stories have even suggested that schools were closed because of a reported emergency, which has forced headteachers to act quickly to ensure that attendance was unaffected.
Andrew Minchin, headteacher at the Robert Napier School in Gillingham, Kent, had to deal with two fake news articles in two days at the end of half-term. One claimed that the school had been shut because of a gas leak, while the other said it was closed because it had been set on fire.
Once the head realised that the fake posts were gaining traction, he sent an email to parents and uploaded a notice on the school’s website during his time off. Staff also had to go into the school to double-check that there had been no incidents.
“I live in a deprived community, so we have to immediately respond, as the parents will assume it’s fact,” Mr Minchin said. “Because of our challenging community, we are constantly trying to deal with student attendance and this doesn’t help.”
Schools have to tread a fine line between responding to the fake stories to get the right message out and not encouraging further pranks by drawing attention to them. “Sites like these are flourishing at the moment. But we don’t want to make a big issue of it, as it may increase the spike,” Mr Minchin said.
‘Unnecessary burden’
Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the trend was “an unnecessary burden on busy people.”
“The difficulty is that, with social media, these things spread like wildfire,” he added. “It’s then very difficult to get the correct information out to the same place.
“Once published, the damage has already been done. Heads have to make a difficult call. It is something that schools are going to have to be prepared for.”
Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT headteachers’ union, said: “I don’t think we can expect schools to respond to every social media fad that comes their way. We need social media sites to make it more obvious that the information is fake.”
