West Rainton Primary School’s e-safety mission statement
The governors of West Rainton Primary School work with staff, pupils and parents and carers to create a school community which values the use of new technologies in enhancing learning, encourages responsible use of ICT, and follows agreed policies to minimise potential e-safety risks.
Our key objective is to ensure that pupils are aware of the potential e-safety risks associated with the use of ICT and mobile technologies, that pupils feel able and safe to report incidents and abide by the school’s e-safety policy.
We also provide opportunities for parents and carers to receive e-safety education and information, to enable them to support their children in developing good e-safety behaviour. We actively and regularly gather the views of our school community and respond to the feedback and plan action appropriately.
School users, including visitors and volunteers are provided with key e-safety information, aligned to our policies, which must be read and agreed to on entry into school.
How governors and staff monitor e-safety in school
Our aim is to discuss, monitor and review our e-safety policy on a regular basis, linking it with other relevant policies such as safeguarding, pupil behaviour, anti-bullying, visitor and volunteer policies. We encourage a whole school approach to e-safety, supporting staff and pupils in the use of ICT as an essential tool for enhancing learning and in the embedding of e-safety across the whole school curriculum.
A designated governor for e-safety meets at least termly with our designated safeguarding lead (DSL) and computing lead to monitor and review the effectiveness of school’s e-safety systems. One of the many activities carried out for this purpose is to actively test the filtering system. In our school, all of our PCs, laptops and ipads connect to Smoothwall filtering system which blocks potentially harmful content from appearing on screen. The DSL receives daily notifications of any filtering alerts, including instant notifications for those deemed most concerning to allow for instantaneous monitoring.
Alongside this, our 360 self-review tool is brought up to date and any resulting actions are built into curriculum planning or wider school improvement. Feedback from parents and talking to pupils during these reviews are always very useful tasks too.
Online Safety Advice
You can use your computer, mobile phone or tablet for lots of fun things, learn new things and to communicate safely with friends and family from all over the world.
This section of our website will provide you with links to really useful advice on how to be careful when you use the internet and some great tips to keep safe. If you are worried about anything you see online or people are asking you questions about where you live or saying nasty things to you please speak to your parents or teacher or follow any of the links below for help and advice.
At West Rainton we take Internet Safety very seriously and educate our pupils on how to make safe use of a wonderful resource. As parents you can help by:
- Closely monitoring the sites your children are accessing.
- Communicating with school on any training, advice or concerns you may have regarding e-safety
- Ensuring they do not give out any personal details to people they meet online including on games consoles such as Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Play Station.
Please remind yourselves of our acceptable use policy documents which should be adhered too throughout your child’s time with us here at West Rainton Primary
- WRPS Online Safety Policy September 2023
- Photographic Policy September 2023
- Acceptable Use Policy September 2023
- WRPS acceptable use policy KS2 2022
- WRPS acceptable use policy EYFS and KS1 2022
Children are growing up in a world with a bigger range of online activities than ever before and it is sometimes very hard for both children and adults to know how to stay safe.
We talk a lot in school about spending more time in the real world than the virtual one! Moderating time online and teaching children to recognise when their internet use is no longer fun or healthy are key components of e-safety self-awareness.
Parents/Online Safety Information
Most parents will want to reduce the risks to their children, and remembering to set parental controls can reduce the risks to children, and reduce the risk to parents when children accidentally spend online money! The internet matters website explains this quite well. Online safety is not just about protecting children from some of the dangers of the internet – it is also about helping them manage their use of technology and most of the parental controls allow adults to set a maximum time for the use of a device or app.
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.
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