Canberra students watching Netflix on school laptops
Politicians have been told ‘incredibly clever’ students have figured out how to watch Netflix on school laptops, despite bureaucrats saying ‘it should not technically be possible’.
Canberra Star
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Education bosses have confirmed “incredibly clever” tech-savvy students are outsmarting school computer security software so they can watch Netflix on taxpayer-supplied laptops.
Education bureaucrats in Canberra earlier this month told at ACT Legislative Assembly committee that it “should not be technically possible” for students to work around security software, but the committee heard that “keeping ahead of them … is always a challenge”.
Details of the hack emerged under questioning from ACT Opposition spokeswoman for youth Elizabeth Kikkert.
Education Directorate bureaucrat Ross Hawkins told the committee: “Typically, if you walk into a school with a Chromebook at the moment, you cannot look at Netflix”.
Every secondary school student in Canberra has been supplied with a Chromebook laptop as part of a multimillion-dollar 2016 Labor election promise which aims to “help engage secondary students, enhance their learning experiences”.
ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry admitted some students had found a way to work around sophisticated security measures.
“It turns out that some of our students are incredibly clever, and keeping ahead of them, as an education system, is always a challenge in any jurisdiction,” she said.
“The expertise that we have in the education system is constantly monitoring and getting on top of that.”
Mr Hawkins said schools were constantly monitoring student laptop use.
“Where we see a breach of security, which we find out about through the various sweeps and security checks that we do, we can follow up with individual students or schools where people have tried to breach security settings,” he said.
“We can look at what the browser histories of individuals are.
“We can look at what has been looked at over our network system.
“We can go in and do investigations to find out what has happened in that space that has allowed that to happen.”
Mr Hawkins said teachers should be keeping students interested enough in their school work so they did not resort to watching movies during class.
“Part of what we have to recognise is that we also have students with phones and other devices,” he said.
An acceptable use agreement bans students from using the school laptops to watch pornography, gamble, use dating sites and browse sites featuring lingerie models or terrorism material.