Online Safeguarding

Mrs Gale                                           Andy Dallas

Online Safeguarding Lead             Online Safeguarding Governor

The Four Cs (four areas of risk):

It is essential that children are safeguarded from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material.

An effective whole school approach to online safety empowers a school to protect and educate pupils, students, and staff in their use of technology and establishes mechanisms to identify, intervene in, and escalate any concerns where appropriate.

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

content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate, or harmful content, for example: pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, anti-Semitism, radicalisation, and extremism.

contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users; for example:

peer to peer pressure, commercial advertising and adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes.

conduct: online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; for example, making, sending and receiving explicit images (e.g. consensual and nonconsensual sharing of nudes and semi-nudes and/or pornography, sharing other explicit images and online bullying, and

commerce: risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams. If you feel your pupils, students or staff are at risk, please report it to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (https://apwg.org/).

Top Tips for Parents and Carers

Advice for pupils:

• Always be careful when you are using the internet. It can help you to keep in touch with your friends and help your education, but it can also cause harm; to you and to others.
• Remember help is always available at school if you are having any problems online.
• Don’t be afraid to talk to your teacher or another adult at school.

Potential online risks can include:

• Access and exposure to inappropriate /disturbing images and content
•  Access and exposure to racist or hate material
•  Sexual grooming, luring, abuse, and exploitation by/with strangers
•  Sharing personal information with strangers that could identify and locate a child offline
•  Online bullying (cyberbullying) by peers and people they consider their ‘friends’
•  Being encouraged to take part in violent behaviour such as ‘happy slapping’
•  Sending or receiving sexually explicit films, images, or messages of themselves or others (this is known as sexting when sent by mobile phone)
•  Glorifying activities such as drug-taking or excessive drinking
•  Physical harm to young people in making video content, such as enacting and imitating stunts and risk-taking activities
•  Leaving and running away from home as a result of contacts made online.

Advice for parents and carers:

There are several ways to help keep children and young people safe online:

• Educate yourself and children and young people know about the dangers online
• Tell them what they should do if anything goes wrong online or upsets them i.e. tell someone about it
• Explain that anything shared online or by mobile phone could end up being seen by anyone
• Ensure computers and laptops are used where you can see and not out of sight in a bedroom
• Use parental settings, filtering software, and privacy setting to block inappropriate sites and content

If you or anyone you know is worried about Child Exploitation, Online Protection, or anything related to Internet safety please click the CEOP link at the top of each page on our website which will take you to the CEOP reporting website.