E-Safety
At Barrow Hall we are committed to keeping the children in our care safe. In today’s digital world, we are aware of the fantastic opportunities educationally and otherwise that the internet brings. However, we are also extremely aware and mindful of the potential risks that children may face when they access the internet using the technology that is at their fingertips on a day to day basis.
Children have regular E-Safety training in school which is delivered and reinforced during computing lessons and whenever they are using technology. Our school also takes part in the annual UK Safer Internet Day events, which happens on the second Tuesday in February. This is something that the children are always keen to be a part of.
In school, we have a team of children from Year 1- Year 6 who are our Digital Leaders. These children work with their teachers to help promote online safety at all times. As with our school council, we believe that by involving children in ideas and decisions that directly affect them, then they are happier with the outcomes. Our Digital Leaders are involved in developing an agreement for mobile phones in school (which is well established in Years 5 and 6) as well as discussing and reinforcing our E-Safety rules with their peers. The children have also been involved with the planning and delivery of assemblies for KS2 children to promote the E-Safety requirements of our Computing curriculum.
Web Filters and Parental Controls
In school, we have appropriate filters to ensure that our children are kept safe on-line whilst they learn. We feel that it is also important for us to guide parents to ensure that they have filters in place to protect their children when they are online at home.
Although broadband, mobile and WiFi providers offer filters to limit inappropriate content, these usually have to be set manually. The following link will take you to an informative resource which gives individual step by step videos and instructions to set up parental controls for many providers. We would encourage you to take a look at these to ensure that you have everything correctly in place in order to keep your child safe.
https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/broadband-mobile/
Parent Information
Below you will find a wide range of up to date Parent Guides linked to a whole variety of E-Safety topics from the National Online Safety website. We have chosen a selection of guides that we feel will be most relevant but a full list of guides can be found at https://nationalonlinesafety.com/guides. These guides provide PEGI ratings for the different apps and suggest how you can set up privacy settings to ensure your child is safe online at all times.
Some more useful websites are listed below. Some of the sites have information just for parents, carers or teachers and others have interactive areas and information for children too. Please take a look yourself first then maybe explore some of the sites together.
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre – ceop.police.uk
Thinkuknow – https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk
NSPCC – https://www.nspcc.org.uk
UK Safer Internet Centre – www.saferinternet.org.uk
Kidsmart – www.kidsmart.org.uk
BBC – https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/curations/stay-safe
Childline – https://www.childline.org.uk
Cybersmile Foundation – https://www.cybersmile.org
Vodafone Digital Parenting – https://vodafonedigitalparenting.co.uk
Information about Snapchat App from Thinkuknow – https://parentinfo.org
Digital Parenting Magazine has been produced by produced by Vodafone as a useful guide for parents and carers to get the most out of our digital world. There are features surrounding cyber bullying, the websites our children visit, the apps our children like to use, the types of behaviour that happens online, ‘How to…’ guides plus lots more.
Click here to view/download the latest edition of Digital Parenting Magazine.
The Department for Education have also produced a useful guide around the subject of cyberbullying. To view this document, please click this link, DfE Advice for Parents/Carers on Cyberbullying, to download.
There is a fantastic area of the NSPCC website that has been developed and is regularly updated called Net Aware. This area gives lots of information about the different social networking sites that our children are accessing. As is always the case with technology, new sites are being developed all of the time and it can be quite difficult to keep up to date with them. Net Aware gives lots of information about old and new social networking sites to help everyone keep up to date – especially parents, carers and school staff! Click on Net Aware to link to the website to find out more.
As we use PurpleMash within our Computing curriculum, we are always kept up to date with any new initiatives and guides that are relevant to children’s current experiences and how to keep the, safe. Please click here for a guide to ‘Parenting in a Digital World Online.’