Online Safety
Online Safety
We recognise that we live in a digital age, where IT opens up a wide range of opportunities for pupils, parents/carers and staff. Whilst IT provides a wide range of potential benefits, we recognise the significant potential for harm and hurt and therefore we work hard to ensure that pupils know the dangers of the online world, how they can be kept safe and how they can report any concerns.
The Internet is fast becoming an essential part of everyday life. The majority of students are competent users of a variety of online tools including gaming and social networking sites as well as devices including smart phones and iPads.
Online safety therefore forms a key component in our safeguarding policy and strategy.
As both parents/carers and pupils need to be more aware of potential issues, please see the links on this page to a range of resources which will provide important information and helpful tips on helping your children stay safe online and provide you as parents/carers with information on what you can do to protect your children whilst still allowing them to enjoy the vast resources that are on the internet.
As always if ever you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us. Working in partnership is absolutely vital.
Every week we send parents/carers a safety newsletter entitled ‘Wake up Wednesday’ which is a key briefing document to support parents/carers with navigating the dangers and risks of the online world.
To keep pupils safe at school we subscribe to a fully managed filtering system in order to mitigate the risk for pupils to access harmful online content at school.
The 4 C's of online safety
An important step in improving online safety at your school is identifying what the potential risks might be.
Keeping Children Safe In Education (see Safeguarding section on our website) groups online safety risks into four areas: content, contact, conduct and commerce. These are known as the 4 Cs of online safety.
Content
Content is anything posted online – it might be words or it could be images and video. Children and young people may see illegal, inappropriate or harmful content when online.
Contact
Contact is about the risk of harm young people may face when interacting with other users online. This includes things like peer-to-peer pressure or seeing inappropriate commercial advertising. Sometimes adults pose as children or young adults with the intention of grooming or exploiting a child or young person for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes.
Conduct
Conduct means the way people behave online. Some online behaviour can increase the likelihood, or even cause, harm – for example, online bullying. Conduct also includes things like sharing or receiving information or pictures that is illegal.
Commerce
Commerce is about the risk from things like online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing or financial scams. Children and young people may be exposed to these risks directly. Schools should also consider how the risk from commerce applies to staff.
Supporting parents/carers
Internet Safety Advice
What to look out for
Your child:
- Is secretive and closes browsing sessions quickly
- Has intense periods of online use
- Gets angry when unable to get online
- Receives/makes calls from/to unknown people
- Has more than one phone/social media account
- Is defensive when talking about being online
- Withdraws from family and real life friends
- Receives gifts/packages from unknown people
What to do
- There is no point in taking device off the young person – they will use someone else’s
- Build an understanding of positive, loving relationships – sex isn’t top of the list!
- Empower your child with knowledge, resilience and skills/strategies
- Get involved – learn the technology
- Keep yourself informed – read young people’s news – Newsbeat, The Huffington Post, Twitter
- Be proactive
Websites with advice for Parents
General
Guide to setting Parental Controls
This website has guides for BT, Sky, Talk Talk, and Virgin Media.
www.childnet.com/resources/family-agreement
A resource to help with family discussions over how you use the internet.
Parent’s Guide to Technology
The guide from the UK Safer Internet Centre answers frequently asked questions and introduces some of the most popular devices, highlighting the safety tools available and empowering parents with the knowledge they need to support their children to use these technologies safely and responsibly.
www.ceop.police.uk
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency’s website.
www.thinkuknow.co.uk
Run by CEOP, this website has advice for parents of both primary and secondary age children.
www.paceuk.info 01132403040
Parents against Child Sexual Exploitation (Pace) UK
http://parentinfo.org/
Expert information to help children and young people stay safe online, for parents and schools.
Useful links for assisting with online safety
We work with a range of external agencies to ensure online safety and should a concern ever rise we will always seek to involve parents/carers – unless doing so would present a bigger risk of harm to the pupil concerned.
Educating ourself in keeping safe online is a collective responsibility. You may therefore find some of the links below useful to you.
