Online Safety
At Chyngton we work to ensure that the children are aware of issues around e-safety and try to incorporate this into many aspects of the curriculum as well as computing lessons. However, many children are online a great deal at home and the following advice from the Local Safeguarding Children board is extremely useful. Please have a look at these websites to help you discuss issues with your child.
Advice for Parents/Carers
The internet is such an integral part of children’s lives these days. It opens up so many educational and social opportunities, giving them access to, quite literally, a world of information and experiences.
Whether on a computer at school, a laptop at home, a games console or mobile phone, children and young people are increasingly accessing the internet whenever they can and wherever they are.
As you would protect your child in the real world, you will want to make sure that they are safe whatever they are doing. Like learning to cross the road, online.
Online safety skills are skills for life. If your child understands the risks and can make sensible and informed choices online, they can get the most from the internet and stay safe whilst doing so – particularly from those people who might seek them out to harm them.
Where to start?
- One of the easiest – and most effective – things you can do is simply talk to your child.
- Help your child think about who sees what they share, and compare it to what they would be happy to share offline. Explain how everything they share online – like user names, images and comments – builds up a picture of who they are.
- Agree on some ground rules together – which sites and apps can be used; when it is okay to use the internet; what parental controls will you use?
- Remember that you can use technical tools like parental controls and filters. Ensure that your child knows about privacy settings on social media apps.
- Safety starts with you. You can help your child by simply setting a good example online. It’s important to show them what safe sharing looks like.
Useful resources
There are a number of excellent resources for parents. The NSPCC has recently launched their campaign ‘Share Aware’ to help your child stay safe on social networks, apps and games. Their downloadable ‘A parents’ guide to being Share Aware’ is particular useful for parents of children aged 8-12, who are starting to do more online.
Internet Matters is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides information, advice and guidance on how to keep your children safe online. The site also includes advice for what to you can do on a range of online safety issues, such as cyberbullying, sexting, coming across inappropriate content, and online reputation.
Other useful sites include:
Think U Know: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/
GetNetWise: www.getnetwise.org/
Chatdanger: www.chatdanger.com/
We work with East Sussex County Council to help children, parents/carers and teachers understand online dangers and how to combat them. The school also utilise global technology partners Net Support and Smoothwall to assist with security, Anti-Virus protection and URL/Web-browsing filtering services. The school uses the government 'Education for a Connected World' guidance along with the National Curriculum to teach children about online safety. On our website, there is a “Report Abuse” button provided by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP), which is part of the National Crime Agency. This can be used to report off or online sexual abuse and/or grooming. Once a report has been made, a team of specially trained advisors will make contact in order to provide tailored help and advice. (Reports can also be made to CEOP by just searching for 'CEOP'.)
The CEOP Safety Centre
CEOP helps any child or young person under the age of 18 who is being pressured, forced or tricked into taking part in sexual activity of any kind. This can be something that has taken place either online or in ‘the real world’, or both. The CEOP Safety Centre has clear information and advice on what can be reported to CEOP, the reporting process and what will happen if you do decide to make a report. You can visit the CEOP Safety Centre and make a report directly to CEOP by clicking here https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre.
If you are experiencing online bullying or something else online has worried you please speak to an adult you trust, or you can talk to Childline at any time on 0800 1111 or at www.childline.org.uk.
USEFUL WEBSITES FOR ONLINE SAFETY
https://www.internetmatters.org
https://nationalonlinesafety.com/resources/wake-up-wednesday
Net Aware has partnered with Ambitious about Autism to bring online safety tips, advice and activities specifically for parents and carers of children with SEND. Click the link below for more information as well as activities that can be used with SEND children to talk about online safety.
https://www.net-aware.org.uk/send-online-safety-hub/
Making sure children are accessing age appropriate content is important as part of our role to educate pupils to become responsible internet users.
We regularly send out useful online safety reminders via parent contact, Facebook and class dojo to update parents and carers of any trends and patterns where children seem to need support.
"Reviews, tips and advice for social media apps can be found at:
Advice on how to set up parental control and safety/privacy settings can be found at:
https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/social-media/ .
