Is the DfE keeping files on “education experts” who criticise their policies? Part 2

A new post has appeared on my old blogging site.

Until I move to Substack completely at the end of the month, I will continue to post to my old WordPress site. A new post has gone up today.

The story so far

In Part 1, I discussed a series of Observer stories about the DfE “keeping files” on the social media activity of their critics. These were based on responses to Subject Access Requests (SARs) made by the individuals who were alleged to have been monitored. Some aspects of the stories seemed credible. There had been attempts to cancel some speakers who had been invited to address DfE-funded events. This part of the stories was consistent with reports from other media outlets about excessive vetting of speakers. However, there was a lack of detail about the alleged monitoring of the DfE’s critics and very little detail about what was in the files. Most importantly, it was not confirmed that all the files had existed before the SARs were made. Sceptics, such as myself, had begun to wonder whether some or all of the files, had been created due to the SARs. We also questioned whether the files showed active monitoring of individuals. Could the files consist largely of emails, or minutes of meetings, where the names of the people who had made the SARs were mentioned for perfectly legitimate reasons? For instance, there is nothing sinister about civil servants reading and discussing education social media.

The Freedom Of Information requests

Several individuals had sent further Freedom of Information requests to the DfE to follow up The Observer’s allegations,  via the website whatdotheyknow.com. The first of these was from somebody who had become convinced by the stories that the DfE must be operating a “Twitter watch list”.

Continued here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to my Substack, to keep getting my posts.