At The Mill Academy, we know how important staying safe is, and we know you’re always keen to promote ways to stay safe at home too. E-safety is taught to all pupils explaining and demonstrating how to stay safe and behave appropriately online. We can only be successful in keeping children safe online if we work with parents/carers to ensure the e-Safety message is consistent. It is important that parents/carers speak to their children about how they can keep safe and behave appropriately online.
E-safety is a key part of our curriculum for both Computing and Personal, Social, Health and Citizenship Education (PSHCE).
Please don’t hesitate to speak to us if you have any concerns about anything your child is doing or experiencing on the internet.
The following list contains lots of ideas and resources to help you to promote online safety – tell us if you know any more good resources.
The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) has published a short, really helpful guide for parents and carers whose children are using social media. The guide includes practical tips about the use of safety and privacy features on apps and platforms, as well as conversation prompts to help families begin talking about online safety. It also contains pointers to further advice and support.
A family agreement is a great way to start a conversation with your whole family about how you all use the internet and discuss together how to behave in a positive way when online at home, at school or at a friends house. To support parents in creating a family agreement, Childnet International have put together some free advice and a family agreement template.
This video from Common Sense Media gives students five basic rules for engaging with social media, including switching on privacy settings and turning off location tracking features that harvest data (parents might be interested to watch this Guardian video which explores this in more detail).
Common Sense has also created videos explaining how the most popular apps and sites work, so if you have ever found yourself wondering what Snapchat, Vine and Instagram are, these are a good place to start your education.
For younger children (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2), there are a number of picture books available online (and in print), including the tale of Digiduck, who shares a nasty picture of a friend, and Smartie the penguin, who runs into trouble with his new computer.
The ever-brilliant Horrible Histories tackles similar themes in a sidelong way, with Lady Jane Grey clicking a dodgy link and getting spammed; a prudish Victorian lying about his age and stumbling across scandalous content (ladies without gloves); and Guy Fawkes learning a valuable lesson about privacy settings as his plot fizzles out.
Other resources are:
www.childnet.com/parents-and-carers This site provides a whole host of useful ways to keep your child safe, with useful pages of advice, key advice, hot topics and tips for discussing online safety.
www.internetmatters.org Lots of useful advice for parents on a range of issues including cyber bullying, online reputations and online grooming. There is also a link to a useful ‘guide for parents’.
www.parentinfo.org Useful articles on a range of current e-safety issues and new apps and websites including Minecraft, Snapchat and ooVoo. New articles are added regularly.
www.ceop.police.uk The official site of the National Crime Agency’s CEOP (formerly the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre), containing advice and useful information and a link for reporting online abuse, exploitation or inappropriate images.
http://www.saferinternet.org More links and advice for parents and children including resources linked to Safer Internet Day.
www.nspcc.org.uk NSPCCs own website with lots of safety advice including video to watch with your children and a link to their work with O2.
www.mumsnet.com Lots of e-safety advice including a section specifically for preschool and primary.