Online Safety

Online Safety at Gossops Green

We value ICT within our school and encourage our children to experience different ways of accessing mobile technology. From laptops and IPads through to games consoles and e-readers, our children are able to access a wealth of resources and explore different technologies to suit their learning styles.

The eSafety of our children is of paramount importance to the school and something that we monitor and revisit regularly. We also work closely with The Collegiate Trust and DB Primary (our school’s learning cloud provider) to ensure that we are up to date with current advice and practice.

We know that parents and carers will also be very concerned that their children are protected and safe when using the Internet, both in school and at home. We have added some documents below that contain useful information on how to keep your children safe, tips on how to initiate conversations around the subject of eSafety and specific advise on online gaming. We have also included various links that will direct you to further information from external organisations.

SMART Leaflet

Blog Safety Leaflet

YouTube - Safety Factsheet

Parental Controls

Other ways that you can keep safe online is by ensuring that you use the internet service provider’s parental controls. To support you with this, below is a links that will take you to a set of instructions on ‘How to set up Parental Controls’. Once you have click on this page you will need too find your broadband service provider. Follow the on screen instructions.

CEOP Internet Safety

CEOP operates a 24/7 service for the receipt of reports. Reports can be made to CEOP by a young person or on their behalf by a parent/carer or professional working with these groups. Children under 11
years of age are encouraged to tell an adult that they trust about what has happened and to ask for their help in reporting this either to CEOP or local police. All reports to CEOP are treated as reports of crime and as such anonymous reports cannot be accepted.

Roblox

We have been aware that another child at our school has been targeted online by an unknown person asking inappropriate questions on Roblox. This is a dangerous game as it links to many unsuitable sites and is easily infiltrated by people who wish to gain access to innocent children. The incident was reported to CEOPS who confirm that these kinds of issues on Roblox are very common, so we advise the website is best avoided for younger children, or at least used with a high level of supervision.

If you haven’t done so already, please set up parental controls on all your children’s devices. There is lots of useful information on the CEOPS website, which can also be accessed via our school website. There are specific sections for the younger age groups and how to keep them safe online.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/5_7/
https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/8_10/
https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/

There are other good websites out there for parents:

Internet matters

Internet matters is an organisation which aim is to keep children safe in the digital world. It provides advice and support for children, young people and parents. There is a particular section which relates to ways to tackle and stop cyber bullying: www.internetmatters.org It can also support with information about parental controls.

NSPCC: Share Aware

www.nspcc.org.uk

There is lots of support and advice available through this site. If you access this site and click the link “Preventing Abuse” – “Keeping Children Safe”; you will find lots of tools.

NSPCC Net Aware: this is a type of search engine for applications and websites. On this site there is reviews written by young people as well as parents which think about the risks but also the benefits.
www.net-aware.org.uk.