Online Safety

Hello, my name is Mrs Hughes, and I am the E-safety co-ordinator and the Early Years Team Leader. I am passionate about keeping you safe in our ever-growing world of technology because for many of us, we see our online lives and offline lives as different, but children are growing up with technology and the internet and for them there isn’t a difference; online life and offline life is just life.

Vision

Intent

Implementation

Impact

At Bleak Hill Primary School, we understand that computer technology is an essential resource for supporting teaching and learning. The internet, and other digital and information technologies, open up opportunities for pupils and play an important role in their everyday lives.

Through teaching online safety we equip children to recognise acceptable and unacceptable behaviour online, as well helping them to identify ways of reporting concerns about content and contact.

Bleak Hill Primary School understands that using online services is an important aspect of raising educational standards, promoting pupil achievement, and enhancing teaching and learning. The use of online services is embedded throughout the school; therefore, there are a number of controls in place to ensure the safety of pupils and staff.

The breadth of issues classified within online safety is considerable, but they can be categorised into four areas of risk:

Content: Being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material, e.g. pornography, fake news, self-harm and suicide, and discriminatory or extremist views.
Contact: Being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users, e.g. peer pressure, commercial advertising, and adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit children.
Conduct: Personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm, e.g. sending and receiving explicit messages, and cyberbullying.
Commerce: Risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and/or financial scams.

The measures implemented to protect pupils and staff revolve around these areas of risk. Our school has created this policy with the aim of ensuring appropriate and safe use of the internet and other digital technology devices by all pupils and staff.

It is essential that we teach children and young people about staying safe online – both in and outside of school. Therefore, E-safety and Online Safety is taught in discrete lessons using the Purple Mash Scheme of Work and National Online Safety Units. There are many opportunities to embed these skills through the computing and PSHE curriculum.

The children have access to hardware (laptops and iPads) throughout the week.