An education practitioners guide to copyright in education

Introduction

Copyright is an important way for creators to protect their works and stop others using them without permission. It means that everyone who creates a new work has the right to control how others can, or cannot, use it. As practitioners it’s important to ensure that when creating activities, lessons and resources that you have obtained the necessary permission before using copyrighted works. It’s helpful to ensure that your learners understand copyright laws too as they may be producing works that are protected. Failure to follow copyright is an offence and can lead to fines being levied against your school. This guide has been produced to help you understand copyright.

It is now simple to copy, paste, remix and reuse content that you find online. Some people see the internet as a place where you can take content without considering who owns it or the consequences. That’s where copyright steps in. Copyright laws are there to protect the things we create and stop others using them without our permission. Copyright is an automatic right and there is nothing that an individual or organisation needs to do to apply copyright to their own work.

Understanding copyright and how it applies to schools and your work as an educational practitioner is important to ensure that you are aware of what you can and cannot do when using the work of others in your teaching as well as in the educational materials you create for learners. It is also important to know how copyright applies to your own original work and how you can act as a positive role model for learners in selecting and using sources in your work.

It is good practice to check what you can do with the published work you wish to use for your teaching. Your school may have licences in place to allow you to use some works. Some copyright exceptions will also apply to you as teachers, which means you would not have to obtain permission (see below).

Some websites have free checking tools which allow you to search by details such as the IS number or title and author. Others feature a catalogue of their copyright work online which you can browse including the following.

The Copyright Licensing Agency provides access to millions of books, magazines, journals, etc. as well as digital resources. Schools in Wales hold a CLA licence and can use the CLA Check Permissions tool which is popular in Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE).
NLA Media Access provide access to millions of newspaper articles and, in addition to using their title search, licensed schools can access the free News Library database. Not all schools hold the NLA licence so check with your business manager or local authority.
The Educational Recording Agency (ERA) allows educational use of TV and radio broadcast which ERA licensed schools can easily search for.
The CCLI provide a number of licences which cover hymns, song and film.
The PPL represent 120k music performers and recording rights holders.

Exceptions to copyright law

There are some specific situations where you may legally use copyright protected work without seeking permission from the owner. These are known as copyright exceptions and many of them have a requirement in the UK to be ‘fair dealing’.

There are two specific education exceptions which you may be able to use. The first is that if a work is not covered by a relevant educational licence, you can copy up to 5% of it in a 12 month period, as long as you acknowledge the rights holder. In addition, you can use a copyright work for the sole purpose of illustration for instruction, which is not restricted by proportion but still needs to be fair dealing.

Other fair dealing exceptions may apply to you, including for the purposes of quotation, criticism and review; research and private study; and parody, caricature and pastiche. You will find more information about copyright exceptions and guidance for educational use published by the Intellectual Property Office.

Examples of uses which would be fair dealing can include using a small segment of video or audio (such as from a TV show, film or music track) for the purposes of criticism or review, creating a parody or caricature, or quoting other people (for example including an excerpt from a recorded interview). In order for something to be fair dealing, the original owner should be credited, the new work should not adversely affect the original’s commercial potential and the amount of original work used should be considered reasonable and appropriate in the context of its use.

It is worth noting that only a court of law can decide if the use of copyrighted work is considered fair dealing. However, considering the above criteria can help foster respectful reuse and avoid allegations of copyright infringement.

Creative Commons licences

You may see some online content marked with a Creative Commons (CC) licence . These licences provide copyright holders with more control over how others may reuse or repurpose their work. A Creative Commons licence can be used by the holder to grant commercial and non-commercial reuse, whether the original work can be modified and can stipulate the CC licence that any subsequent derivatives of the original must also hold (a form of ‘paying it forward’ known as Share Alike). For example, you could use a Creative Commons licence on your own original work to allow other educational practitioners to reuse or repurpose it for work with their own learners but prevent them from using the content for commercial purposes, and require them to use the same licence for anything they produce based on your original work.

These licences make it much easier to select online content that can be freely reused or repurposed in your own education materials or by learners in their work. Search engines such as Google and Bing allow you to filter image searches by CC licence, and Creative Commons also have a search engine to help you find content. Hwb users are able to access a wide range of licenced images using Britannica ImageQuest (you must be logged in to Hwb to access this service).

You should always include the CC licence type with any content you reuse or repurpose, in the same way that copyright is credited. You should also check whether the licence type allows you to do what you would like. Visit Creative Commons for more information.

Linking to or embedding online resources

When using technology in education (either face-to-face or to support blended learning), it is increasingly likely that you will want to direct learners to visit a website or online content as part of their learning. There is no issue around copyright with linking to publicly available content online, provided you are linking to where the content is originally hosted rather than taking a copy and hosting it yourself. However, it is also wise to check links before sharing them with learners to ensure that the content is suitable and, in the case of a website, that other content accessible by following that link is also suitable (for example does the website contain other pages or content that isn’t age-appropriate? Does it display advertising? Does it link to content that is unsuitable?).

The same applies to content on video sharing platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. These sites offer the ability to embed video clips on other webpages or in other online services or apps such as Google Slides. Embedding video clips is unlikely to infringe copyright if the audience is internal to the school as the video is still hosted on the original site (YouTube, Vimeo). However, downloading or creating a copy of a YouTube video to use in a teaching activity could constitute copyright infringement if not covered by permission from the rights holder or covered by a copyright exception.

Accessing, using and sharing workbooks and other educational resources

Educational materials can be protected by copyright laws in the same way as other copyright-protected materials and works (such as films, TV shows, books, artwork, music, photography and software applications). Many of the educational resources you use in your teaching will have either been purchased by your school (where purchase constitutes a licence agreement) or have been made free for use by educational establishments (under specific terms and conditions of use). Some educational products require the purchase of multiple user licences (for example per learner or per staff member) or as a subscription in order for them to be used in an education setting. An example of this would be worksheets which are intended to be copied for learners.

It is important to remember that, although your school has purchased educational resources (or access to them), these resources are licensed but not owned by the school. Use of these resources must comply with the terms set out in a licensing agreement. This may include restrictions on whether and how parts of the resource can be reproduced, for example, through photocopies, scans, screenshots or digital photographs and whether they can be used in public facing settings or performances.

Before reproducing part of a resource or attempting to use it in a public context, you should always check the licensing agreement for the resource. For example, simply showing a copyrighted picture along with the copyright symbol and text ‘© Copyright <name of resource creator> would not make it acceptable to reproduce the work of others if a licensing agreement forbids reproduction of the resource.

For some types of content, local authorities may have purchased bulk licences for schools in their areas. Your school or local authority should hold details of those licences and what they allow you to access or reuse.

Using images, films and other copyright material in teaching materials

Finding materials online to support your teaching has never been easier. Search engines enable users to find images, videos and other content that can be used to make educational materials more interactive and engaging for learners. However, you should always remember that finding something online does not mean that you can use it in any way that you wish. These materials may be protected by copyright and, with the global reach of the internet, they are easily found regardless of country of origin. Always check what you can do with online content, which is subject to UK copyright legislation, wherever it’s come from.

There are many ways that an education practitioner may inadvertently infringe copyright when preparing and using materials for their lessons. A common example is to find an image through a search engine (for example Google Images), take a copy of this image and paste it into slides for a lesson without seeking permission from or crediting the owner. Although the image was available to find and view, Google Images does not ‘own’ the image, it belongs to someone else and taking a copy may have infringed copyright law (depending on how the original owner wished the image to be used by others). There have been cases where schools have been issued fines due to infringement by a staff member. Images may contain embedded tracking which tells the creator when their image has been downloaded.

If you are sure that the creator gives permission for their online content to be used in your teaching materials, or you believe a copyright exception applies (see below) it is still important to credit the original owner by including the copyright symbol and text ‘© Copyright <name of content owner>’ with or next to the content. You should be aware that modifying or remixing the work of others in your own work does not give you ownership over the original work, and you still need to credit the original owner. You should always credit the original author or user who created the content rather than the website or social media platform it is hosted on.

There is more information about the copyright issues in using digital images in the Intellectual Property Office’s copyright notice.

Teaching resources

The following resources are useful for educating children and young people on what copyright is, how to apply licencing to their own work, and the consequences of infringing on the work of others:

An education practitioner’s guide to copyright in education