Online Safety

Children of today are growing up in a world of ever-changing technology. Whilst this is a positive thing in many ways, as it can open children’s minds to the world beyond their community, we also need to be mindful of the risks that this can also bring.

The 4 key areas of risk associated with Online Safety are known as the 4Cs:

Content – being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful content e.g. pornography, self-harm, suicide, extremism, radicalisation, racism.

Contact – being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users.

Conduct – online behaviour e.g. sexting, cyber-bullying

Commerce – gambling, advertising, phishing etc

At The Butts Primary School, we take our responsibility in helping our pupils to stay safe online seriously. Some of the measures that we have in place are detailed below.

We use firewalls and filtering and monitoring software to a) block access to harmful or inappropriate content on any devices connected to our network and b) provide us with information as to any attempted access to such content which has been denied so that we can act upon it as appropriate. These are regularly reviewed and the effectiveness of these systems are audited at least annually.

The best defence is education and the more informed our school community is about Online Safety, the more likely we are to succeed in keeping our children safe online.

We teach children about online safety as part of our PHSE and Computing curriculum and through workshops and assemblies during the year.

Staff receive training on children protection and safeguarding, which includes online safety.

Whilst the school has an essential role to play in ensuring children are staying safe online when they are in school, we recognise that parents and carers also need to be able to keep their children safe when they are not in school. To help provide parents with the tools that they need, we arrange information sessions for parents from time-to-time, some of which may be targeted at specific year groups and others are more widely available. Details of these will be communicated to parents as appropriate.

We also post links to ‘Wake Up Wednesday’ on social media which is a weekly bulletin from National Online Safety.

Information Sessions for Parents

Online Safety Information Sessions 2023 -24

Social Media and Online Child-on-Child Abuse

The school has an essential role to play in preventing online child-on-child abuse, even when it occurs outside of school and any concerns should be raised with the Designated Safeguarding Lead, Mrs Julia Woodhouse or in her absence, one of the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads, Miss Rebecca Gregor, Mrs Cherry Willder, Mrs Rachael Cook or Mrs Karen Bevis.

Online Guides

The links below are to guides for parents which may be useful. Some of these contain general information e.g. setting parental controls, age ratings for different applications, starting those conversations with children about online safety. Others are more specific and provide information and guidance relating to games and applications which children may use e.g. Minecraft, Roblocks, Fortnite and social media e.g. Snapchat, TikTok.