At Wolsingham Primary, the purpose of Internet access and access to related technologies is to raise educational standards and to promote pupil achievement. We believe that The Internet and related technologies are an essential element in 21st century life for education, business and social interaction and that we have a duty to provide students with quality Internet access and access to related technologies as part of their learning experience and to prepare them for the future. We endeavour to work closely with parents to support them in ensuring that that they have the necessary information to help them to keep their children safe online.
The internet has changed all of our lives, particularly our children’s. For parents and carers this opens up a whole new world of things to be aware of. For many of us, this can all be a bit too much. You might be struggling to keep up with the things your child is doing online, you might wonder whether what they are doing is safe, and you might also be thinking how can I be as good a parent online as I am offline? This site aims to make online parenting simple. Even if the only search engine you use is a pair of binoculars, do not despair.
At Wolsingham Primary, children are regularly involved in activities helping them to understand the importance of E-Safety and some of the resources used in school can be found below.
In Key Stage 1, Hector and his friends will teach the children how to stay safe on the internet:
In Key Stage 2, this website has been created to show children what is good, look at what’s not and show them ways that they can get themselves out of bad situations:
Computers, mobile phones or tablets can be used for lots of fun things and to make lots of new friends from all over the world.
Parent Information
Parent Information is collaboration between CEOP and Parent Zone and provides information to parents and carers about their children’s wellbeing and resilience, internet safety and a wide range of other topic matters like sex, relationship and body image.
Internet Matters is a site paid for by many British companies. It has a lot of good advice on adding parental controls as well as on most aspects of online safety. Parental controls will only help keep children safe. The best safety feature that a child has is their parent or carer. Take the time to talk to your child about the apps and games they are using and don’t be afraid to say no sometimes!
The range of online apps changes on a regular basis and the NSPCC have a site called Net Aware. This provides unbiased up-to-date information on current apps and sites along with advice to parents about dealing with issues.
The NSPCC have teamed up with O2 to provide advice to parents and have a free helpline on 0808 800 5002. They will also give support in any O2 shop – you do not have to be an O2 customer.
ThinkUKnow is the website aimed at children and their parents from the National Crime Agency. It has lots of useful suggestions and advice on how to report issues. It also has lots of games and activities including Jessie and Friends for the younger children and Band Runner for the older ones.
For the youngest children being tricked into sharing pictures can be an issue. LGfL have produced a lovely free video which has some great advice and a very catchy song!
Many children will at times suffer from online bullying. It is really important that they have someone they can talk to and know that it is not acceptable. Most apps and sites will have systems inn place that allow bullying to be reported. Your child’s school may be able to help.
Children can call Childline on 0800 1111 for advice on anything that is worrying them.
Finally since 2015 is has been a criminal offence for an adult to send a message with sexual content to a child (This is Section 67 of the Serious Crime Act 2015). If you are concerned that this might have happened please contact The Police without further using the device. This will help ensure that evidence can be preserved. The Police can be contacted by phone or from the ThinkUKnow website.
Remember that you can also set parental controls on your child’s devices. You should be able to find more information regarding parental controls specific to the device on the manufacturer’s website. Please see links for two of the main manufactures of phones and tables below:
Apple Parental Controls
Samsung Parental Controls
You can also find a guide to setting up your child’s first phone below:
You can also set parental controls on games consoles. See below for help guides for some of the most popular games consoles:
PlayStation 4
Xbox One
Xbox 360
Guidance for Children
We have added an e-Safety Guidance for Pupils section on our website with further information on using the internet safely.
We have also set up a pupil action group within school that joins our E-Cadets and Anti-bullying groups together, called Safety Squad. Please visit our Safety Squad page to find out what our pupils are doing to support the e-safety curriculum in school!
Downloads
You can view or download the additional information about e-Safety Guidance for Parents downloads by clicking the links below.
e-Safety – A Parent’s Guide Leaflet
Online Gaming – A Guide for Parent’s
Social networking – A Guide for parents
Internet Safety News
We will update this section as new information or resources comes to our attention.
Setting up your child’s first phone (June 2021)
Recently bought a phone for your child? Click here to read a guide about how you can set up their phone safely.
Safer Internet Day 2020 (February 2020)
This week is Safer Internet Day. For the latest issues and things to think about to help keep your child safe, please click the link below to see this year’s E-Safety Powerpoint. Videos included in our PowerPoint can also be accessed below. Whilst some of them may feel Secondary specific, you would be surprised to find how many of the following issues may be relevant to Primary school age.
Tik Tok (January 2020)
Broadband Filtering Help (December 2019)
As the Christmas holidays are approaching, the children may get new devices for presents. Our Safety Squad would like to remind you that it’s possible to turn on broadband filtering to keep your children safe. To support you with providing your child a safe space to explore online and ensure you reduce the risk of them seeing bad things when using devices, please find this great guide from Internet Matters. It lets you tailor the advice to the exact devices you have, so you get complete peace of-mind.
First Day of School (September 2019)
It’s fun to share your children’s first day of school photos for all your relatives and friends to see but please consider what other information you may unknowingly be sharing. Often posts will share:
- the name of the child
- the year group they are in
- the school they are attending complete with the uniform they are wearing
- geotagging – providing a location for where you child may live
To ensure your child’s image is being shared safely: double check your privacy settings for your statuses and photographs and restrict the ability to share the status/photograph with other people who may not have as restrictive privacy settings.
Sharing Photos (June 2019)
As part of one of our eCadet challenges, we are raising awareness of sharing photos and in particular, selfies! Watch the video clip and read up on about how you can keep sharing photos safely by clicking here!
New Think U Know Resources for Younger Children (March 2019)
Parental Controls (March 2019)
In our action group, we have been discussing why some apps have the age limit of 13 and how we can identify the recommended age for social media apps. However, our Safety Squad have found out that children are still accessing certain social media platforms during a recent survey of our screen usage.
Our recent survey found that the following apps are being used by some of our children:
- TikTok
- Youtube
- Snapchat
- Roblox
- Fortnite: Battle Royale
To help raise awareness of the apps at home, we would like parents to be aware of the following resource bank provided by the National Online Safety website.
Internet Safety Week 2019 – What more can I do to help my child stay safe online?
This is the last day of Internet Safety Week. We have only touched on a few key issues and facts and as a school we work hard to ensure our children are equipped with the tools and knowledge to keep themselves safe online throughout the year and not just over this week. We hope that what they learn will help them deal with the sort of issues that they will come across when at home, but sometimes this is impossible to predict.
It is important that yourselves as parents and carers continue to help reinforce the messages that they learn. If you find that you need help or support with an issue, you are more than welcome to come into school and we will do our best to support you.
There are also several websites that you can go to, to seek advice or look for you own resources to help your children. Watch the video clip below for more suggestions to ‘learn about it, talk about it and deal with it’ or click on the document below to see some suggestions:
SID2019 Parents and Carers – Information and Online Resources
Internet Safety Week 2019 – SMART
In Key Stage 2, to help our children stay safe on the internet, we teach them the acronym S.M.A.R.T.
Our Year 3 class have worked hard this week to make some SMART posters to help them remember the important messages associated with the acronym. Have a look at one of their posters below to see what it stands for. If you know one of our Year 3 children, see if they can tell you what each one means too!
Internet Safety Week 2019 – What are your rights on Social Media?
The following information is provided by TES (Times Educational Supplement). ‘In today’s increasingly digital world, it’s more important than ever that our young people are able to understand and feel in control of their online rights. But more often than not, they’re not even aware that they even have any.’
The Children’s Commissioner for England, TES and Schillings have worked hard to simplify the Terms and Conditions for five major Social Media sites: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and YouTube. Although the age limit for all of these platforms is 13, we are aware that some children still use them.
Some of the rights came as a shock to us including the following taken from the Instagram terms and conditions:
- Although you are responsible for the information you put on lnstagram, we may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with lnstagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use lnstagram, and any other personal information we find such as your birthday or who you are chatting with, including in private messages (DMs). • We are not responsible for what other companies might do with this information. • We will not rent or sell your personal information to anyone else without your permission. • When you delete your account, we keep this personal information about you, and your photos, for as long as is reasonable for our business purposes.
To see the documents shared by TES, please see below:
YouTube – Simplified-T & Cs
Facebook – Simplified-T & Cs
Instagram – Simplified-T & Cs
Snapchat – Simplified-T & Cs
WhatsApp – Simplified-T & Cs
Internet Safety Week 2019 – Screen time
One of the most talked about issues for e-safety at present is the amount of screen time we get. Although using smart phones and tablets do have their benefits, they can also be addictive. Some games and apps are even designed to keep your attention without you even realising making it hard to put down your phone or tablet! For some, this can be disruptive socially and even physically by keeping us awake longer at night and distracted or tired throughout the day.
There are no set ‘safe’ amounts of screen time and the amount of screen use that is right will vary from family to family. Have a look at the following report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for some questions that may guide you to come up with your own boundaries.
There are lots of things you can do to help limit screen time. For instance, many smart phones, tablets and game consoles have all worked hard to include screen time reports as well as restrictions in some cases, that will help you gain an idea of how much screen time your child is getting and help you to control it.
You can also restrict screen time in many ways such as switching to night mode to prevent notifications during the night. In the case of YouTube, you can also turn off ‘autoplay’ which will stop a new video starting when another stops. This can be helpful to limit the risk of inappropriate videos appearing in the queue too.
Online Safety Update (November 2018)
We would like you to be aware of the latest statistics about online safety taken from the LGfL DigiSafe Report on the 2018 Pupil Online Safety Survey.
The survey asked 39,834 pupils aged 7-16 about their online lives to gain an insight into their behaviour, attitudes and experiences.
Some were quite an eye-opener!
We have summarised the findings of the survey and they can be accessed by clicking the link below:
Statistics from the LGfL DigiSafe Report on the 2018 Pupil Online Safety Survey
