Online Safety

At Old Park Primary School we believe that educating children about being safe online is crucial part of growing up in the 21st Century. Our Computing curriculum has online safety embedded throughout, focusing on identifying some of the risks of using the internet and how it keeps you safe.

We have clear rules about using the internet at school, and they are displayed anywhere a computer is situated.

The school has a comprehensive Online Safety Policy available from our Policies section of the website.

 

Take our Online Safety Quizzes!

The digital leaders have been working hard to make some online safety quizzes to test your knowledge. Can you score full marks?

What we do in school - Lessons

Our well-being and computing curriculum focuses on online safety and provides children with awareness of online safety issues. We also provide children in KS1 & KS2 with real-world strategies and skills that they can use to keep themselves safe from harm online.

Our dedicated team of digital leaders help to promote online safety within their own classes and across the school.

Online safety is also embedded across our curriculum wherever it is appropriate to do so.
Whenever a digital device is used, age appropriate online safety will be taught alongside it, always helping children to learn how to behave safely and responsibly online.

What we do in school - Community

Parents and children can come and speak to our trained safeguarding and online safety staff about any issues and concerns.

 

Fortnightly parent information sheets are sent, providing key information and advice on current online trends and issues.

What we do in school - Security

We have several systems in place to protect all members of our school community:

Filtering

We use a leading educational internet filtering system, to help protect our school community from illegal and dubious content.

Active Monitoring

We use active monitoring software, so we can our community from content that may slip through any filters we have in place, as no filter is ever 100% perfect. It also allows us to make sure that we catch any issues of cyberbullying, radicialisation or even simple internet searches for issues that may be affecting our community.

Email

Whilst teaching children how to use e-mail, our systems are locked down so the only people that can contact them are other pupils or automated systems for online tools (for example, if a child needs to reset a password for a service we use online)

Be Safe Online at Home

There are many ways you can help with being Safe Online at home. With all types of devices in the home now being internet connected, it is more important than ever to protect yourself and your family from potential issues online.

The following links provide lots of useful information and tips:

Thinkuknow Parent Helpsheet

https://parentinfo.org/

https://tutorful.co.uk/guides/how-to-keep-kids-safe-online

Be Safe Online at Home - Home Broadband, Public Wi-Fi and Mobile Phones

All of Britain’s major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mobile Phone Operators now provide filtering systems that you can manage. This allows you to block any potentially harmful content from entering your home or mobile device.

A lot of the UK’s public wi-fi services now use the “Friendly wifi” branding to signify those connections that have filtered services to protect children.

For more information please visit the following site

Broadband and Mobile Networks – Internet Matters

Be Safe Online at Home - Video Games & Apps

Video Games are rated by PEGI, the Pan European Gaming Information Group. These are legally binding ratings in the EU. It is illegal for a store to knowingly sell an underage child a video game.

Games consoles and mobile devices that can play games all have parental control systems that can limit who your child can talk to online, what games and movies they can watch based on rating, as well as systems to limit the number of hours in a day, week or month the consoles are played for. Some even have hour limitations, so they can’t play between certain hours of the day.

Please visit the Internet Matters section on how to setup and manage games consoles for more information

It can also be hard to decide whether a new app or game is appropriate for your child. It is worth remembering that to protect vulnerable children, most social networking sites have a minimum age policy of 13. We would also encourage parents to ‘friend’ their children and add themselves to group chats so they can monitor activity.

These websites are useful tools in deciding which games and apps to allow on your child’s device. They give age ratings, descriptions of their features and include ratings on different aspects of safety and suitability.

www.net-aware.org.uk (also available as a smartphone app)

www.commonsensemedia.org

www.askaboutgames.com

familygamerTV (YouTube channel)

This site also gives information on how to limit or block in-app purchases on different devices:

https://pegi.info/page/game-purchases 

Be Safe Online at Home - Devices

Children are being given access to mobile devices at a younger and younger age, and many parents don’t know how to put controls on their tablets and laptops to protect their children from age inappropriate materials.

These controls won’t stop all internet content, just content available from app stores such as the Apple App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Store so need to be used in tandem with other tools such as internet filtering provided by your ISP.

Internet Matters has a great article to explain how to setup Parental Controls for Windows 7, 8, 10, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.

National Online Safety Parent Guides

7-11-Suggested-Apps

Twitter-Parents-Guide-December-2018

Virtual-Reality_August_2019

VPN-Online-Safety-Guide-March-2019

What-children-need-to-know-about-online-bullying-1

WhatsApp-Parents-Guide

YOLO-Parents-Guide-May-2019

YouTube-Kids-Guide

11-14-Suggested-Apps

12-Smartphone-online-safety-tips-guide

12-Social-Media-Tips

Age_Ratings_March_19 A-Parents-Guide-to-Online-Challenges-030419

Apex-Online-Safety-Guide-March-2019

App-Store-Online-Safety-Guide-September-2018

COD-Guide-May-19

Cyberbullying-1

Discord-Guide-May-2019

Do-Video-Games-Actively-Cause-Violent-Behaviour

Early-Years-Suggested-Apps

FIFA-20-Guide-1

GTA_Jan_2019

House-Party-Parents-Guide-February-2019

Instagram-Online-Safety-Guide-March-2019

KIK-Parents-Guide-December18

Live-me-Parents-Guide-November-18

LiveStreaming-Parents-Guide-V2-081118

Mental-Health-Social-Media-2019

No egg cookie recipe

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NOS_Tumblr_May_19

NOS-Childs-Devices-2019

NOS-fake-news-Jan-1019

NOS-Home-Devices-April-2019

NOS-Like-Online-Safety-Guide

NOS-TV-SAFETY-GUIDE-2019

NOS-YouTube_April_Guide

Online-Safety-Tips-for-Children

Parenting-Gamers_F

Reddit-Parents-Guide-2018

Sadfishing

Screen-Addiction-June-2019

Sexting-Parents-Guide-Oct-2018

Skin-Betting-Guide

Snapchat-Parents-Guide-May-2019

Social-Media-and-Mental-Health-June-19

Twitch-Parents-Guide-November-2018

Videos