Online Safety
Teaching children how to keep themselves safe online is an essential part of our children's learning. With the increasing use of digital technology both in school and within the home comes the increasing need to be aware of the potential dangers and to protect personal information online.
At St Andrew’s Primary School, we ensure that our pupils are aware of some of the risks that are online and what to do to stay safe. Through our computing scheme of work, children are taught to use the internet safely, responsibly and respectfully. We support Safer Internet Day and have class discussions and crew assemblies on internet safety. Online safety guides and resources are shared fortnightly with parents via our school newsletter and school Facebook page and we carefully monitor our online safety policy and practice using 360 Safe. Whole school workshops are also delivered by a Cyber Protect Officer to help teach children about staying safe online and our local Police Community Support Officer works with our older children to support their understanding of the internet and social media. Children, parents and staff are required to sign Acceptable Use policies regarding internet use and we work closely with our IT Systems to regularly check our monitoring and filtering systems.
Using the internet safely at home
To keep your child safe, you should:
- Ask permission before using the Internet
- Only use websites you have chosen together or a child friendly search engine.
- Only email people they know (why not consider setting up an address book?)
- Ask permission before opening an email sent by someone they don’t know
- Do not use Internet chat rooms
- Do not use their real name when using games on the Internet (create a nick name)
- Never give out a home address, phone or mobile number
- Never tell someone where they go to school
- Never arrange to meet someone they have ‘met’ on the Internet
- Only use a webcam with people they know
- Ask them to tell you immediately if they see anything they are unhappy with.
Kooth
We would like to signpost parents to KOOTH an online support for children from the age of 10 years. It is a NHS funded organisation that offers wellbeing support, advice and counselling. Children can sign up to its services on the homepage. Kooth has trained counsellors that will reply to messages sent from a child. There are also age appropriate forums that children can be part of. Teachers of our Year 5 and Year 6 children will be discussing this support network with their classes over the next couple of weeks. They will not be suggesting that all children access it but making them aware that it is another organisation like ChildLine that they can use.
Please see the link below:
Resources