Online Safety

At  Renhold VC Primary School we are committed to the safety and well-being of all our children.  E-Safety is about keeping safe electronically.

Online safety at Renhold

We do everything we can in school to prevent unrestricted access to internet content that children should not be accessing and have several policies in place. These are designed to ensure that we safeguard your children at all times.

• Online Safety Policy
• Filters on our Web Browsers
• Regular checks and monitoring of website access
• Clear Procedures for Children and supervision whilst on the web
• Online Safety is taught through our PSHE curriculum
• Safeguarding Policies (SEND, Child Protection, Acceptable Use and E-Safety, Staff Code of Conduct)

Online Safety at home

Children can access information online from the laptop, their mobile phone to more hidden methods such as through game sharing on the X-Box or various other devices. It is important that you understand how you can do a few simple things to help protect your children using new technology.

The internet and social media sites can be great fun if used in the correct way. They can also be very dangerous if used in a careless and unsupervised way.

Here you can find a number of hints and tips to help make your home a safer technology environment.

Click on the links below to visit our top e-safety sites or to download helpful e-safety information. 

Zip it:

Make sure your child knows to always keep private information safe and watch what they say on the internet. People may not be who they say they are online, and it’s not always possible to control who can see your child’s information.

Your child should know not to give out information like:

• Their full name
• Photos
• Postal or email addresses
• School information
• Mobile or home telephone numbers
• Details of places they like to spend time

Make sure your child knows they shouldn’t arrange to meet people that they have only met online. Even if they have been chatting with someone for a while, that person is still a stranger.

You can help keep your child’s information safe by setting privacy settings. This can restrict access to personal information and photos on things like social networking sites.

You should also encourage your child to use a nickname instead of their real name in chat rooms or on instant messaging services. To stop people accessing your child’s online accounts, encourage them to keep their passwords secret, and to change them regularly.

Block it:

Get your child to block people who send offensive messages and tell them not to open unknown links and attachments. They should delete any suspicious emails or attachments as they may contain something offensive or have a virus that can cause damage to the computer.

One of the main ways children can come across inappropriate content online is through search results. Most search engines include a ‘safe search’ option that excludes results containing inappropriate images or key words.

You can install parental control software to filter out harmful and inappropriate content for computers and some mobile phones and games consoles.

Flag it:

Your child should come to you or a trusted adult if they are worried or unhappy about anything they see online. They should also do this if a friend they have made online has asked to meet them in the offline world.

If your child does experience inappropriate content online, report it to the website it appears on.

Have a look on the KidSMART Website for useful hints and tips to keep you safe on the internet. Follow their KidSMART rules to keep you safe online.

Look at the Childnet website. Childnet is charity that works with young people all over the world, helping them understand how to stay safe, when using the internet.

Check out the CBBC website for tips for staying safe online.

Find out more about Safe Surfing with Dongle on the CBBC website…

http://old.kidsmart.org.uk/movies/Safe_Surfing.swf

ThinkUKnow contains lots more tips on Internet Safety. www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents

Internet Matters has a variety useful information. Here is a link to a parents guide to WhatsAPP:

https://www.internetmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Internet-Matters-WhatsApp-Safety-Guide-August-2023-2.pdf