Online Safety at Coten End Primary School

Without question, the most impactful online safety education comes from home. We cannot prevent children from accessing the internet and all parental controls/restrictions have their limitations. Children need to feel safe in discussing online safety issues with their parents and it is the role of the school to enable children to feel safe discussing internet safety issues at school too.

A recent survey has shown that 77% of children want their parents to be there for them if something worries them or happens to them on the internet. It is important that as parents and educators we react calmly to online safety incidents and that our first instinct is to make children feel safe not scared in these situations.

We recommend that the most important step parents can make is to have regular conversations with their children about internet usage and how to be safe online, but a few additional steps we can suggest are:

• Share profiles/devices with children
• Ensure the strongest privacy settings are in place
• Set time boundaries
• Never share any personal information
• Look at the potential danger of sharing offensive/inappropriate content

It is the role of the school to provide children with an effective, reactive Online Safety curriculum. As a school we follow guidance from the UK Council for Child Internet Safety and the Education for a Connected World framework (2018) alongside resources provided by Common Sense Media and Internet Matters.

Online safety education will be provided to pupils in the following ways:

• An online safety programme of study will be provided and should be regularly revisited – this will, however, be reactive and will include vital, relevant and up to date messages about internet usage, video gaming and apps we are made aware of;
• Key online safety messages will be reinforced as part of a programme of externally supplied assemblies and activities annually on World Safer Internet Day;
• Pupils will be taught in all lessons to be critically aware of the materials/content they access on-line and be guided to validate the accuracy of information;
• Pupils should be taught to acknowledge the source of information used and to respect copyright when using material accessed on the internet;
• Pupil questionnaires about internet usage will be carried out annually;
• Staff should act as good role models in their use of ICT, the internet and mobile devices.
• Key messages will also be linked in with work children do in their annual Taking Care Project

Websites with further information for parents, carers and young people:

www.saferinternet.org.uk

www.commonsensemedia.org

www.thinkuknow.co.uk

www.net-aware.org.uk

Website for parental controls and privacy settings set-up guides:

www.internetmatters.org 

Warwickshire County Council Websites:

www.cybersafewarwickshire.com

www.safeinwarwickshire.com/prevent