Online Safety
Children are spending more time online, in fact the time spent watching TV has actually reduced in favour of online media.
Talking about online safety a little, but often, works best.
(Ofcom’s research into media use)
During your child’s time in school, they will learn how to stay safe online in an age-appropriate way. This may be through the Computing Curriculum, PSHE or by listening to visitors who we invite into the school to discuss this theme.
Although we promote internet safety at every eventuality, we realise that some children do not always remember or they get tempted to try out something. We are very fortunate to have many parents who support internet safety at home.
If you are ever concerned about your child, please do come in and talk to your teacher. The NSPCC (online) have lots of information for parents too.
E-safety Rules
These e-Safety Rules help to protect pupils and the school by describing acceptable and unacceptable computer use.
- The school owns the computer network and can set rules for its use.
- It is a criminal offence to use a computer or network for a purpose not permitted by the school.
- Irresponsible use may result in the loss of network or Internet access.
- Network access must be made via the user’s authorised account and password, which must not be given to any other person.
- All network and Internet use must be appropriate to education.
- Copyright and intellectual property rights must be respected.
- Messages shall be written carefully and politely, particularly as email could be forwarded to unintended readers.
- Anonymous messages and chain letters are not permitted.
- Users must take care not to reveal personal information through email, personal publishing, blogs or messaging.
- The school ICT systems may not be used for private purposes, unless the head teacher has given specific permission.
- Use for personal financial gain, gambling, political activity, advertising or illegal purposes is not permitted.
The school may exercise its right to monitor the use of the school’s computer systems, including access to web-sites, the interception of e-mail and the deletion of inappropriate materials where it believes unauthorised use of the school’s computer system may be taking place, or the system may be being used for criminal purposes or for storing unauthorised or unlawful text, imagery or sound.
CEOP
CEOP is a law enforcement agency and is here to keep children and young people safe.
If someone online has acted inappropriately towards you, your child or young person you know, please use the CEOP button to report it.
Checking apps, games and websites
It’s sometimes difficult to know if media is appropriate for our children, especially if it’s an app or website that we haven’t used.
Common Sense Media lets you search for movies, apps, games and websites and see their official age rating as well a recommended age from other parents.
Common Sense Media
NSPCC Net Aware, is a similar service. Helping you find ratings and information on games, online apps and more.
NSPCC Net Aware
Great Advice
Settings
Accidents can happen and sometimes inappropriate content is available in places you wouldn’t expect. We recommend setting parental restrictions and content filtering (available from most internet service providers).
No restrictions are completely infallible. It’s ok for children to make mistakes, it’s important that they know to get help from an adult.
Help and advice
If you have an urgent issue, something online was really not acceptable then please use the CEOP button above to report it directly to the police.
If you’ve got questions or not sure how you can help your child, please pop in for a chat.
BBC OwnIt – digital wellbeing app
The BBC have launched a new app for children called Own It. The app monitors how young people interact with others online and uses artificial intelligence to evaluate the mood of the child so it can offer advice. For example if the child types ‘you’re really stupid’ the app will alert the sender and ask if they really want to send. It does a lot more and definitely worth a look. For more information see here:
Swiggle – child friendly search engine for younger children
For use at home, Swiggle is a child-friendly search engine developed by South West Grid for Learning and built on the Google Safe Search technology. It is free, ad free, has a reporting page for children and adults, active blocking of inappropriate search strings and even a Swigglebot to give advice.
For more information go to the link below and look at the menu (top right of page)