Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what recent assessment they have made of the appropriateness of gambling-related content on the online programming platform Scratch which is used by children in schools.

The department does not support or mandate individual products. Schools should follow the statutory guidance ‘Keeping children safe in education’, supported by the department’s filtering and monitoring standards. Schools should monitor pupils’ use of devices whilst in school.

The relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance states that young people should be taught the risks of online gambling and how to seek help if they have concerns. The computing curriculum supports pupils to make informed decisions whilst online or using other technologies.

The department-funded National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) provides training and resources to improve computing provision, including support for teaching programming concepts through languages such as Scratch.

The NCCE is reviewing all teacher resources that include Scratch content. Guidance for keeping children safe when using Scratch will be included in all relevant content by June 2025. NCCE materials do not use gambling as a programming exercise for pupils. None of the NCCE’s lessons or courses recommend pupils use the search function or engage with other people's content on Scratch. Teachers are advised to use the offline version of the platform to prevent pupils from searching ready-made code.