The Internet has opened up a wealth of opportunities for children to access information and to communicate with others. However, alongside these opportunities we have to recognise that there are accompanying dangers that we must endeavour to protect children from. 

 

Staying safe on the internet is an integral part of our overarching safeguarding responsibilities towards the children in our care and as such is not only addressed during focus ‘Internet Safety’ days but forms part of daily practice. Part of this protection is the fact that the school has appropriate filters and monitoring systems in place which are designed to limit children’s exposure to risks from the school’s IT system. However, we must also ensure that children themselves become equipped with the skills and understandings to contribute to their own safety at an age appropriate level. 

 

Internet safety is one of the many aspects of the children’s learning in which your support and involvement is most valuable. We hope that the information and links to follow will help you to work in partnership with us to keep your child safe on the internet. 

 

In the 2018 DfE publication “Keeping children safe in education” three areas of risk within the umbrella of ‘internet safety’ are identified:

 

• Content – inappropriate, harmful material such as photographs, fake news, racist or extremist views.
• Contact – harmful online interaction with other users such as advertising, online bullying, adults posing as children.
• Conduct – personal online behaviour that causes harm such as sharing personal information, photographs or online bullying.

 

Children need to develop understanding of the digital world so that they can develop what can be termed ‘digital resilience’ which will mean that they can understand when they are at risk online, know what to do to seek help, learn from their experiences and importantly, recover when things go wrong. 

 

We use many activities designed to support the children’s learning in this respect in addition to a specific series of lessons that ensure appropriate progression through school from Foundation Stage to Year 6.  In addition, children are reminded each time they use the internet that there are ‘rules’ for its safe use. 

 

The following are links to websites which you may find useful:

 

www.parentinfo.org

 

www.parentzone.org.uk

 

www.netaware.org.uk    

(NSPCC guide to social networks)

 

www.commonsense.org    

(independent reviews and age ratings about all types of media for children and their parents) 

 

The following guide provides some useful tips for talking points to get conversations going around internet safety. 

 

National Online Safety have created a range of guides for parents providing useful information about different games and applications in addition to aspects of online safety such as screen addiction and cyber bullying. They have also produced a list of questions to be used as conversation starters about Internet Safety. These guides along with a further publication titled Digital Parenting are to be found below. 

 

 

 

	FIFA-Parents-Guide-September-2018	[pdf 5MB]
	FIFA-Parents-Guide-V2-081118	[pdf 3MB]
	Instagram-Parents-Guide-V2-081118	[pdf 8MB]
	Reddit-Parents-Guide-2018	[pdf 3MB]
	Twitch-Parents-Guide-November-2018	[pdf 3MB]
	Roblox-Parents-Guide-V2-081118	[pdf 17MB]
	Grooming-Parents-Guide-September-2018-1	[pdf 13MB]
	Instagram-Parents-Guide-V2-081118	[pdf 8MB]
	Youtube-Parents-Guide	[pdf 7MB]
	Yubo-Parents-Guide-V2-081118	[pdf 16MB]
	Snapchat-Parents-Guide-V2-081118	[pdf 6MB]
	WhatsApp-Parents-Guide	[pdf 1MB]
	KIK-Parents-Guide-December18	[pdf 2MB]
	Live-me-Parents-Guide-November-18	[pdf 3MB]
	The-App-Store-Parents-Guide-September-2018-1	[pdf 1MB]
	Twitter-Parents-Guide-December-2018	[pdf 1MB]
	Tik-Tok-Parents-Guide-October-2018-v2	[pdf 1MB]
	What-children-need-to-know-about-online-bullying-1	[pdf 1MB]
	Screen-Addiction-Parents-Guide-091118	[pdf 9MB]
	Fortnite-Parents-Guide-051218	[pdf 12MB]
	Minecraft-Parents-Guide-091118	[pdf 14MB]
	7-Conversation-Topics-November-2018	[pdf 3MB]
	Digital Parenting 6 NEW	[pdf 26MB]