E-Safety Guidance
At Pelham we consider the on-line safety of our children to be extremely important. Some of the issues you may be aware of surrounding internet use for children and young adults are as follows:
- Staying safe online - content, contact & conduct
- Cyberbullying
- Social networking
Through our timetabled PSHE and computing curriculum, we tackle these important issues with children in lessons. Each year group covers an age appropriate e-safety unit of work at the beginning of each academic year and children are reminded of these principles throughout the year through events such as ‘Safer Internet Day’ and ‘Anti-bullying Week’.
These issues are all covered in the sites recommended below and we strongly advise you to take some time to read and understand the areas. If you have any questions then you are welcome to contact school for advice. We do provide an annual e-safety training workshop for parents, run in the spring term. Our school internet is filtered and children are appropriately supervised during internet use. Children are taught how to search safely, effectively, respectfully & responsibly. This involves thinking about appropriate key words to use and only visiting recognised sites. They are taught what action to take if they do see something upsetting. At home this may be turning off the screen and telling an adult immediately. We also include age-appropriate lessons on copyright and plagiarism.
Please be aware that Google Images cannot be effectively filtered and so children may be better using alternative sites, such as http://www.photosforclass.com/
At home, children may have access to the web from many different devices, not just PC's and laptops. They often have tablets (eg iPads), mobile phones, X Boxes, iPods, Playstations, Nintendo DS, e-Readers and other wifi-enabled devices. It's important to be aware of this and the best way to ensure their safety is to ensure that your child is supervised whilst having such access. With many of these devices they are able to access inappropriate sites & games, and may also be able to communicate with strangers online. Some devices do have the ability to impose parental controls.
If you at all unsure as to the suitability of various platforms, games or films, you can check them out here. This site rates them for content & gives minimum age guidance.
Many parental guides are also available on the Common Sense Media website . Childnet also have lots of useful materials for parents and games for children of all ages.
It's important to talk openly with your children about staying safe online - just as it is about crossing the road and stranger-danger. Discuss potential issues and what to do if anything happens. We would want children to tell an adult immediately, but how you respond to this is very important. Whilst it would be tempting to ban children from using devices, is not necessarily the right course of action as it may discourage them from telling in future. They may also start using them outside of the home where you are not aware or supervising their use. If you have any concerns or questions about e-safety please arrange to speak to someone at school.
It is so important that you all remember your online safety lessons we have done in school. These 'SMART' principles are just as important at home. Click on the image, to watch the video about Kara, Winston and the Smart Crew. They will give you some great information about how to stay 'SMART' when using the internet.
Click on the picture to view the Netsmartkidz series of episodes about how the gang tackle some tricky online issues.
E-safety links for parents
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/
https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/