Parent group told to "cease & desist" in row over remote learning

Activists want the EIS union to withdraw claims they're telling parents to record their kids' online interactions with teachers.

Parent group, Us For Them Scotland had been told to ‘cease and desist' from potentially breaching privacy and data laws.

But the campaigners say evidence they've shown to the union proves it was a misunderstanding.

Earlier this week , Scotland's largest teaching union sent the pressure group a warning letter after seeking legal advice.

At the time, Edinburgh mum and co-organiser of the pressure group, Jo Bissett dismissed the allegation as a "smear campaign" and told us her members are concerned about a "disparity" in remote learning standards around Scotland.

She said: "The accusation that's made in this letter is entirely wrong, and it's completely unsubstantiated.

"What we are doing at the moment is, we're asking our 13,000-members to feed back how online learning is actually going for them now.

"What we're wanting to make sure is that we don't have a repeat of what happened in the last schools lockdown when there were many examples of pupils having no work; teachers being unavailable.

"We're already seeing - reported by members - a huge disparity in what is being made available to pupils across Scotland.

"We would never encourage anyone to break the law, and to make unauthorised recordings of anyone.

"This is a simple smear campaign, and the EIS should spend less time making things up, and more time trying to sort out the mess that they're complicit in creating."

EIS General Secretary, Larry Flanagan responded: "This isn't a smear campaign - it's responding to unedited posts on their Facebook, and we're simply advising them it's unacceptable, and they should advise their members that this is inappropriate action.

"Posts which were reported to us by our members were posted on the Us For Them Scotland Facebook page and weren't taken down.

"This particular group seems to be targeting teachers in quite a negative fashion.

"Parents are rightly concerned about the remote learning platform that's been offered to their children, but that doesn't justify illegal actions - as I understand it, some quite virulent anti-teacher comments.

"For whatever purpose they intended - critique, ridicule, or evaluation - our members are concerned about their online safety.

"You're not allowed to record - without permission - what is a closed platform in Glow, intended to deliver education and learning to young people from their teachers.

"An outside party is not allowed to record data without permission from the people involved in it.

"There are particular issues also around young people who might well be part of that recording as part of a classroom interaction.

"We're simply asking this group to respect the law and to desist from calling on its members to breach data protection in the way that they have done."

A couple of days after the row broke out, and after Us For Them Scotland spoke to us on the radio, the group issued a press release in which Jo Bissett stated: "We have absolutely no interest in having a feud with the EIS – but we can’t leave this accusation hanging.

"The exchange they have based the accusation on was about encouraging children to make video diaries of their home-school experience to share with others.

"As such, we have invited the EIS to withdraw the allegation so we can all move on.

"We have different objectives to each other, so of course there are going to be strong words and passionate disagreement, especially through tough times."