19 July 2024
Online Summer Safety
Dear parents/carers
As the summer holiday approaches and young people will have, potentially, more unsupervised time, a lot of which may be spent online. Whilst the internet is a great tool it can also pose significant risks to young people. We would like to remind you of these risks, once again.
You should particularly be aware of the potential danger of:
- your child seeing or being encouraged to exchange offensive and/or explicit images and messages;
- strangers who may be there to 'groom' young people;
- your child being encouraged to participate in dangerous online challenges or harmful activities
- cyberbullying (bullying using digital technology)
- identity theft, phishing and financial scams, gambling
You will know from our ICT policy (extract below) that the school uses a monitoring system that monitors the language used, the keywords searched and the sites that students access or attempt to access whilst using any school device, whether in school or at home.
ICT Acceptable Use: Student Policy 2
Students should be aware that the school uses a monitoring and filtering system.
Under normal circumstances this is only monitored by school staff throughout the school day, in term time only.
We, therefore, would like to remind you of the responsibility that parents and carers have, and the crucial role they should play in discussions regarding internet safety and in monitoring their child’s online activity.
The link below will take you to some very practical advice from the NSPCC.
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/safeguarding-child-protection/social-media-and-online-safety
If you are worried that your child may be at risk of significant harm or that a crime has been committed, you must contact the police.
Kind regards
M.A. Nutt
Assistant Principal
