What are the 10 communication principles? 

A digital communication should not:

• Disclose sensitive personal facts about an individual 

• Be threatening, intimidating, or menacing 

• Be grossly offensive to a reasonable person in the position of the affected individual 

• Be indecent or obscene be used to harass an individual make a false allegation 

• Contain a matter that is published in breach of confidence 

• Incite or encourage anyone to send a message to an individual for the purpose of causing harm to the individual 

• Incite or encourage an individual to commit suicide 

• Denigrate an individual by reason of colour, race, ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability

The focus at a school level will be on Education and Pastoral Care or the Well-being of students involved.

If this is on a site or device external to the school:

From a school perspective, the focus will be on education and the pastoral care (well-being) of the students involved. The school does not have the authority to act on incidents of this nature beyond the education and pastoral care (well-being) of students involved under the Privacy, Education and Training Act. 

1. Encourage harmed student's parents to contact Netsafe to report the incident, sharing video and photo evidence if available. The school may also contact Netsafe if the incident reflects one or more of the 10 principles outlined in the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015. 

2. Work through school-level actions in a similar way consistent with any other school-related behaviour incident e.g. mediation may occur (using the Principles of Natural Justice, Restorative Practice and PB4L approaches). 

3. The school may indicate they know of the content but not reference or share the site, image or information with any other students when engaging with others, including students or parents. 

4. The school will not push to identify the perpetrator. 

5. The school will notify parents of students involved, remain neutral and seek for them to contact Netsafe.

Follow-up actions could include:

• Cyber education to students (general approaches not targeted to assumed perpetrators) 

• Mediation between harmed students or students involved 

• Contact parents and request they investigate, follow up and remove sites if necessary