A concerned father has flagged a flaw within the government-provided educational LearnPad tablets after realising that anyone can access a child through the communication platform Microsoft Teams, potentially exposing them to online grooming and bullying.

Swen Kalski, a father of three who is also a software developer, realised that he could access one of his son’s school Teams accounts using his personal e-mail address due to the lack of a security configuration.

Asked about this, an Education Ministry spokesperson said: “Discussions are underway with Microsoft leading to the possibility of adding a new feature in MS Teams to enhance the platform so that iLearn Accounts would not be visible and searchable.

“This will take time as a new feature has to be applied worldwide by Microsoft.”

The spokesperson added that Teams is used to give access to parents in facilitating communication between them and schools for the benefit of their children’s educational progress.

The One Tablet per Child scheme was rolled out in the 2016-17 scholastic year.

Since then, tablets have been distributed for free to all Year 4 students in state, Church and independent schools.

All this came at a cost of €12 million, 80 per cent of which has been financed through the European Social Fund.

The security flaw

When the coronavirus pandemic broke out in March 2020 and children eventually resorted to online schooling, the tablets became a portal into the online classroom through Microsoft Teams.

Kalski, whose children are aged four, eight and 10, noticed that they could also provide a potential gateway for abuse when he was looking into an issue with his child’s tablet.

His oldest son’s Teams account was accidentally set to the wrong class and school.

“During my investigation, I checked if it is possible to contact my child with an anonymous account in Teams of the LearnPad provided by the Ministry of Education,” he said.

“It is possible for everyone to get in touch with our kids. The doors for grooming and child abuse are widely open for every child using the ilearn.edu.mt accounts,” he added.

Kalski noted that one had to know the child’s email address to access the system but that a particular format used by schools made this easy to crack.

Struggling to be heard

As he tried to resolve the issue, he was bounced around between the Ministry for Education, the Institute for Education and the Digital Literacy Centre, he said.

Kalski has flagged the issue with the ministry but did not hear back so he wrote about it on his blog, tensorthings.com, and contacted Times of Malta.

He is now calling for a central point of contact where such uses could be raised and dealt with.