It is the school’s aim to make sure everyone can enjoy the benefits of this in the safest way possible. Please find some useful advice and links in the tabs below.
Encourage your child to tell a trusted adult if they ever feel awkward, embarrassed or worried by anything that they are asked to do or say by an online friend. Then the trusted adult can help them to take the appropriate form of action depending on the seriousness of the concern.
Many websites include a report abuse button. If you can’t find one you can access it here.
We want everyone to make informed choices when accessing different websites on the internet, thinking about who the site was made for and why can help us to decide whether it is a good source of information. It is important for the young people to be responsible about the sites that they visit, if they aren’t sure that a website is suitable, the message is to not access it at all.
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/ gives excellent advice on this and if you find a site that you think is inappropriate you can report it to the Internet Watch Foundation at http://www.iwf.org.uk
BY PHONE: If the bullying is happening by phone, contact the mobile phone company. All UK mobile operators have nuisance call centres and procedures in place to deal with such incidents.
They may help you to change your number or, with help from the police, take action against the bully.
BY EMAIL: If the bullying is happening by Email contact the provider of the Email address that the bully is using.
For example if the bully uses an @outlook.com address contact Microsoft.
FURTHER HELPLINES:
Childline free 24hr. helpline for children & young people 0800 1111
Samaritans – 08457 90 90 90
USEFUL WEBSITES:
A) Childnet – A range of resources for families and schools – http://www.childnet.com/
B) Talk to someone who is trained to help you at – https://www.familylives.org.uk/
C) kidshealth.org – A range of resources geared towards keeping children safe online – http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/cyberbullying.html
At Usworth Colliery Primary School we are committed to doing all we reasonably can to limit children’s exposure to the risks from the school’s digital system.
Our school uses antivirus, filtering and monitoring systems, provided and managed by Omnicom Solutions, to effectively manage and monitor the use of ICT across school. This includes the use of the Securus Monitoring, which is checked on a weekly basis, to highlight and records inappropriate use.
Usworth Colliery Primary School adheres to the Meeting digital and technology in schools and colleges standards set out by the Department of Education to meet our duty in this respect.
In order to meet our duty around filtering and monitoring, we have the following in place:
- Mrs Forster (Head Teacher) is the lead person for filtering and monitoring, supported by Mr Arthur (ICT Lead).
- The filtering and monitoring provision is reviewed reguarly in conjunction with our ICT support provider.
- Harmful and inappropriate content is blocked without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning.
- Effective monitoring strategies (Securus) are in place, which meet the pupils’ safeguarding needs.
More information can be found in the following policies on our Policies and Key Information Documents page:
- e-Safety Policy
- ICT Policy
- Twitter/X Policy (Social Media)
As a school we strive to address extremism and radicalization as part of a wider school focus on "What does it mean to be British?" and as part of the E-Safety strand within the ICT curriculum.
We need to be mindful that as young people spend much more time online, they will come across many types of news to include, fake, real, biased, exaggerated and AI generated impersonation. They are then only a few clicks away to exploring more and vulnerable to being dragged into things. Factors such as being easily impressionable young people especially at risk. The poster below gives some helpful tips and advice to help parents and young people when deciding what to believe and what not to believe!
We are also provide guides and tips to parents about keeping children safe on their apps, games, social media.
Advice From National Online Safety
E-Safety Parent Guides
E-SAFETY IN THE CURRICULUM
Reception start by reading most of the book entitled PeguinPig (we stop before the end). The story centres on a little girl who finds a brand new creature and decides to go in search of it at the zoo. Instead she finds a fierce bear. Following the story, the children try to find a PenguinPig on the internet. As an extension, they also explore if bears like to play. Following this, we discuss if we can trust everything we find online. Mozilla X-Ray Goggles are used on a website of their choice to show the children that online content can be altered. We then read the end of the story which encourages the little girl “ask an adult if you should believe or just forget”.
Reception also cover E-Safety themes in their classroom lessons on British values individual liberty lesson. The following tweet was shared after the most recent lesson was delivered!
The primary focus in Key Stage 1 is to get the children to reflect on what technology they use. As a result, we start by thinking about what different kinds of computers we use at home and at school, we even make a pictogram to show this.
We then talk about what we do on the “computers” and how we can stay safe as well as thinking about tips we need to follow when using our technology. We also look at how using ICT is different to when we are playing and talking with friend in real life. This is linked to anti-bullying week using the story of Digi-Duck – http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/teachers/ks1/digiduck.aspx. Later in the year, the children consolidate their understanding by exploring the Hector’s World series and then producing their own version of the story based around the themes of episode 1 (please see an example below).
Building on the themes of Year 1, in Year two we again look at what kind of technology we use and how we use it both at home and at school. Again we explored the story of Digi-Duck but this time we looked more closely at who you could tell if something happened in the online world. Pupils use this to produce a poster.
In order to widen their understanding, the children then look at Sid’s Smart rules from Lee and Kim's Adventure and create a podcast to offer advice to others.
Key Stage 2 use The Smart Crew Videos (Chapter 4 – Who Should You Tell) – http://www.childnet.com/resources/the-adventures-of-kara-winston-and-the-smart-crew/chapter1 – to explore top tips for staying safe online. Again, the focus in the Autumn term is cyber-bullying to fit in with anti-bullying week.
e-Safety - Year 3
The resources are then revisited in the Spring and Summer terms to cover topics such as What Should You Share and Meeting Up online. Pupils use the information they obtain to create top tips for others. Pupils then create their own avatars and use them to share top tips.
Year 4 again uses Chapter 4 in The Smart Crew series but this time expands the tips given using their own research skills. They use the information they find to create multimedia presentations (please see examples below). The children also watch Chapter 5 – What Should I Keep Safe, which is used as a discussion point before they produce blog entries on a chosen topic. This is consolidated later in the year, when the children blog using an online nickname/persona.
e-Safety - Year 4
After learning about how search engines function, Year 5 put their new found research skills to good use and find out more about the consequences and solutions to cyber-bullying. They use this information to produce a comic which includes a type of cyber-bullying, a solution and a consequence. This leads on to a wider discussion about what to do if you find something inappropriate online, including the role of moderators.
e-Safety - Year 5
Year 5 also explore how reliable different sources are on the internet. This includes looking at when information was written, who wrote it, why it was written (bias) and if it can be changed or edited. Again moderators are a point of discussion.
As part of their E-Communication topic, Year 5 pupils also explore the effect of comments on photo sharing sites. Within this lesson they discuss what to do if they are trolled and the effect commenting has on the victim.
Building of the validity of different sources, Year 6 take at closer look at how Wikis function and how this might affect weather we can trust the information. As well as exploring the author, age and purpose of the information they also look at how domain names (and how easy they now are to buy) can affect if we trust information.
Year 6 also take part in Mr Arthur’s Expert’s Challenge which allows us to teach the class about a brand new topic. These include computer viruses, malware, firewalls, spam, identity theft and phishing. We look at what they are and how we could either avoid them or what to do if we become a victim of any of the above. How they achieve this is their decision, although most groups opt for using PowerPoint.
E-SafetyY62023
e-Safety - Year 6
E-Risks and solutions are then consolidated later in the year through discussion. The children then use a layered editing program (Paint.net) to produce posters.
e-Risks
As part of the Scarf resources, pupils also analyse the reasons why content is manipulated (this includes exploring advertising and how users present content on social media).
E-Safety is of paramount importance to us. As well as regularly planning dedicated curriculum time to the topic, tips and discussion points are often covered informally either as part of another topic or as part of informal chat.