“That ICPA Qld advocates to the Queensland Department of Education (DoE) to review and amend current social media governance settings to allow individual schools greater control over the sharing functionality of their official social media pages, including the ability to restrict or disable the public sharing of posts where appropriate.”
Queensland state schools utilise social media platforms such as Facebook to communicate with families and the broader community. These platforms are operated by third-party providers and are governed by both departmental policies and platform settings outside the direct control of individual schools.
Current Department of Education social media guidelines emphasise transparency, public accessibility, and compliance with platform terms, meaning that school pages are typically set as public-facing and content can be shared beyond the immediate school community.
While schools obtain media consent from parents and caregivers prior to publishing student images or information, this consent is generally provided with the understanding that content is being shared within the school community, not distributed widely to unknown audiences.
Due to current platform and departmental constraints, schools have limited ability to control how their content is redistributed once posted. The “share” function allows posts to be circulated beyond the intended audience, often reaching large and unknown networks without the school’s knowledge or oversight.
At Isisford State School, posts have been shared externally, and some have reached thousands of people. Schools are not notified of who has shared content, reducing their ability to manage privacy risks or respond to concerns.
ICPA Qld calls on the Department of Education to provide schools with greater control over social media sharing settings to enhance student safety and privacy, ensure media consent is meaningful and informed, reduce the unintended wide-scale distribution of student images, support schools in maintaining community trust, and align social media use with contemporary digital safety expectations. This is particularly important in small rural and remote communities, where the impact of privacy breaches can be amplified.
