Students at a network of private schools set up by the Exclusive Brethren sect are subject to near constant surveillance, including in out-of-school hours, according to former staff, students and parents.
They say school-issued laptops are closely monitored by a roster of church members.
Parents of former students told Guardian Australia they were also watched by these so-called “device monitors” to ensure they were checking the internet use of their children, and could be reported to the church if they failed to do so.
All students, staff and parents are told their school devices are monitored and the OneSchool Global (OSG) network says any surveillance strictly abides by the Privacy Act and all other Australian laws.
OSG says there is “no involvement from any church” in the surveillance procedures, but this is disputed by former staff and students. Official school documents are also understood to refer repeatedly to the involvement of local community “pastoral support”.
The Brethren, which is now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, was once accused by the former prime minister Kevin Rudd of being an “extremist cult”. Former members say it practises a strict doctrine of separation from “worldly” people, meaning its members are not allowed to socialise with non-members, and access to technology and the internet is tightly controlled.
The Brethren counters these claims by saying it is a “mainstream Christian church”. “The fact is that we live amongst and work beside people from within our church, outside of our church and in all walks of life,” a church spokesperson said.
The leader of the church, Bruce Hales, has rejected Rudd’s accusations as “not factual”. “They were not informed, and it seems to us they were deliberately intended to put the Brethren in an unfair light for political purposes,” he said.
Guardian Australia has spoken to multiple former staff members, students and parents who claim that students who attend OSG schools are monitored through a combination of CCTV cameras installed in all campuses, and through the monitoring of laptops by other members of the Brethren community.
Devices and internet use watched
OSG has 31 campuses in Australia and 2,500 students enrolled. Globally, it runs 120 campuses in 20 countries from its headquarters in Sydney.
The school network was established by the Brethren to enable their children to be educated away from the mainstream school system. The church says they do not run the schools, and that non-Brethren families can enrol their children if they adhere to their ethos.
The school is supported by volunteers from the church community.
Computers and phones used by Brethren church members come from the Brethren’s central business group, Universal Business Team (UBT).
The computers used by students in the Brethren schools are installed with UBT software called Streamline3 which allows for remote monitoring of internet and email use, and includes periodic screen capturing. Personal devices are not usually permitted.
So-called “student device monitors” are engaged on a voluntary basis in each Brethren community linked to each school campus, and it is expected that at least one of these monitors is a Brethren “elder” – a father over the age of 50 whose children have left school. OSG said that all of these volunteers receive extensive training and are required to have Working with Children checks.
Each week, these monitors – charged with helping to review and apply IT policies – are required to report to the school the internet activity of each student and any inappropriate search terms or content.
They are expected to regularly report their findings to the local church leadership.
The monitors are also expected to ensure that parents access their child’s email account by having it installed on their own devices.
The monitors are required to report to the school weekly on any parents who are not accessing the Streamline3 portal to check on their child’s internet use.
Parents say they are sent a weekly summary of their child’s internet use and are then required to log on to the portal to access the full computer activity of their child, including their email activity and any files they have accessed or created each week.
Households that are reported as not having logged into the portal may also be referred to the local community for pastoral action.
One parent who has since left the Brethren, and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they had been reprimanded for not reporting on their child’s internet use.
“You can’t protect your child as a parent without getting done as a member of the church. They are looking for you to dob in your child if they are doing anything the church doesn’t like.”
According to a publicly available privacy notice for “younger students” at OSG schools in the UK, the school “will monitor your child’s use of email, the internet and mobile electronic devices”.
“In certain circumstances we will look at the content of your child’s communications (e.g. emails and text messages). This is to check that your child is not misbehaving when using this technology or putting themselves at risk of harm.
“The monitoring we do is carried out using computer software which will automatically tell us if something isn’t right. The software collects screenshots, search terms and websites visited.”
An “ICT misuse – behaviour management policy” written by the OSG “global IT team” ranks IT breaches according to four different levels, with a serious breach including the sharing of non-school related music, videos or games.
‘Blacklisted’ sites
Facebook is among the “blacklisted” sites, and repeated access to it is also considered a “serious” level breach that will be reported to campus administrators for action.
Unsuitable personal relationship communications are also in this category.
Separately, the schools also engage volunteer community members for an email monitoring team at each school, which is tasked with checking the email correspondence of students.
Families are told that parents must be “vigilant” in monitoring their children, and it is seen as “faithful” to report something to the church authorities as they seek to protect children from the outside world.
Parents can be sent screenshots of every website visited by their child on a daily or weekly basis and are taught how to permanently delete any unsuitable files – such as music unrelated to school work – and to search for terms of concern.
Guardian Australia understands that one guidebook for device monitors describes how to search a child’s internet activity for “terms of concern”, suggesting as an example a search for the word “gay”.
OSG told the Guardian that their technology “uses categorisation and content filtering, based on the same standard lists of search terms and classifications used by other schools to identify any online activity which is not appropriate in a school environment”.
“This technology does not have additional filtering which would block searches around sexual orientation. It would likely have additional filtering which would apply to searches around self-harm, eating disorders and so on.”
Use of CCTV cameras
Closed-circuit television cameras are also installed in all indoor and outdoor spaces of OneSchool Global campuses, including classrooms, storage rooms and entry to bathrooms.
All outdoor areas are also covered by CCTV, including carparks, areas where children queue for buses, and gymnasiums. Areas that are not covered by CCTV are considered to be out of bounds for students.
Staff rooms are also monitored with CCTV.
A “privacy notice for staff” issued to UK-based school staff and seen by Guardian Australia says that the schools regularly monitor and access the IT system used by staff using Streamline3.
“The School may also monitor staff use of the School telephone system and voicemail messages. Staff should be aware that the School may monitor the contents of a communication (such as the contents of an email),” the memo states.
“Monitoring may be carried out on a random basis and it may be carried out in response to a specific incident or concern.”
It says the Streamline3 software “automatically monitors the School IT system (for example, it would raise an alert if a member of Staff visited a blocked website or sent an email containing an inappropriate word or phrase”.
“If anything of concern is revealed as a result of such monitoring then this information may be shared with the HR Team and this may result in disciplinary action.”
Exclusive Brethren schools have operated under various names since 1994, but were rebranded globally as OneSchool Global in 2019. In a 2009 fellowship meeting in Argentina, Hales spoke about his “philosophy” in regards to the schools.
“My philosophy about schooling is I want to be in control, and I want to know those teachers know that we’re in control. And control is critical. And if they don’t respect you, I wouldn’t have them near the place … They’ve got to respect our way of life … the way we’re bringing our families up … our ethos … And that’s how you keep control in the school.”
‘Normal practice,’ school says
A spokesperson for OneSchool Global said it was “normal practice” for the school to have “software, policies and procedures to prevent harmful content, malware and the like” on school-issued computers.
“At the 31 OSG schools across Australia, schools strictly abide by the Privacy Act and all other Australian laws. This includes in relation to the use of CCTV, which is undertaken in the same fashion as other schools,” the spokesperson said.
They said the school had “a multilayered approach” to keeping children safe while they were using school-issued devices, saying Streamline3 was installed along with safe-search mode and other off-the-shelf technology.
“Streamline3 is installed on every OSG device – which is essentially a firewall that protects from malware and viruses, in addition to being an internet filter. It has different profiles and applications for students compared to non-students,” the spokesperson said.
“The non-student version is not monitored and is used for filtering and preventing malware only.”
Do you know more? Email sarah.martin@theguardian.com
