Online Safety
The internet is essential in life for education, business and social interaction and can be a great place to be. At Westende Junior School, we take online safety very seriously and it is integral to our children’s curriculum, embedded in their learning. We strongly believe that the use of the internet is vital for children as they grow up in the modern world. It’s essential to be realistic – banning the internet or technology is not the answer and it often makes a child less likely to report a problem; education around safe use is the key to giving children the knowledge and skills they need. We use a range of strategies to ensure we are teaching children good habits and safe behaviours when going online, as well as providing a range of contexts and experiences for them to practice and embed these habits. These will often include:
- Drip feed of key messages through all curriculum subjects, such as how to search safely through a search engine, or how to collaborate in a document;
- Sequential and progressive planning for direct teaching of Online Safety throughout the school;
- Specific whole school focus on annual and national events such as Safer Internet Day.
Now, more than ever, we need to need to talk with and listen to young people about what they do, see and experience online. Conversations are key to ensuring they feel confident to speak up about anything that troubles them online and can tell us what they think should be done to make the internet safer and more enjoyable for everyone.
The links below are some of the sites we use in school to support our work with online safety.
CEOP Think You Know – https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/
CEOP Child Exploitation and Online Protection – https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/
Safer Internet Day Research Report 2024 – https://d1xsi6mgo67kia.cloudfront.net/uploads/2024/02/UK-Safer-Internet-Day-2024-Research-Report.pdf
Social Media
Social media sites and apps are updated all the time and children often know a lot about them! The link below will tell you where to go to find help about the safety features available on these popular social networks.
Keeping Children Safe Online – https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/
Social Media Guides – https://saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/social-media-guides
TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook all have a legal age of 13, so please consider this when your child asks for these apps. Here are some useful links to learn more about these apps and safety advice for parents and carers.
Tik Tok – https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/esafety-news/tik-tok-app-safety-what-parents-need-to-know/
Video Games
More and more children are accessing online gaming and used positively, this can be a way for them to interact with their friends. However, there are risks to online gaming and the links below will give you advice about different games, how the PEGI ratings work and settings for how to set parental controls so that they can play safely.
PEGI Ratings – https://parentzone.org.uk/article/pegi-games-ratings
Parental Controls – https://www.esrb.org/tools-for-parents/parental-controls/