Online Safety

At St Margaret's Primary Academy we believe it is crucial that children have the opportunity to develop their understanding of online safety and know how to behave when on the Internet. Online safety is taught half termly through assemblies, lessons and whole school e-safety awareness weeks.

The following Online Safety advice is from www.thinkuknow.co.uk:

• Help your children to understand that they should never give out personal details to online friends they do not know offline.
• Explain to your children what information about them is personal: i.e. email address, mobile number, school name, sports club, arrangements for meeting up with friends and any pictures or videos of themselves, their family or friends. Small pieces of information can easily be pieced together to form a comprehensive insight in to their lives and daily activities.
• Make your children aware that they need to think carefully about the information and pictures they post on their profiles. Inform them that once published online, anyone can change or share these images of them.
• It can be easy to forget that the internet is not a private space, and as a result sometimes young people engage in risky behaviour online. Advise your children not to post any pictures, videos or information on their profiles, or in chat rooms, that they would not want a parent or carer to see.
• If your child receives spam or junk email and texts, remind them never to believe their contents, reply to them or use them.
• It’s not a good idea for your child to open files that are from people they don’t know. They won’t know what they contain—it could be a virus, or worse – an inappropriate image or film.
• Help your child to understand that some people lie online and that therefore it’s better to keep online mates online. They should never meet up with any strangers without an adult they trust.
• Always keep communication open for a child to know that it’s never too late to tell someone if something makes them feel uncomfortable.

Online Safety is about the protection of children whilst they are using the Internet and digital technologies.  This includes: risk-taking and inappropriate behaviour by children and young people; risks and inappropriate behaviour by others to children and young people; illegal activity.

Whilst our school strives to empower your children with the knowledge to stay safe, it is important that you have a good awareness of the risks and dangers yourself.

Please check out the links provided below for further information on how to keep your children and yourself safe online!

Gaming and the risks

• Chatting with people they don’t know.
• Inappropriate or unmoderated chat.
• Requests to chat in private.
• Offering gifts or trades to groom a child.

 What can you do to help your child with safer in-game chat?

• Play, or watch your children play, online games to understand how they talk online, who they talk to online and what you’re comfortable with.

• With older children, who may not want you to play with them, have regular chats about the games they play, who they talk to and how.

• Use family controls and in-game settings to manage, limit or turn off in-game chat to make sure that you’re confident interactions are right for your children.

• Keep games devices in a shared space in the house  and use settings to limit screen time to help children to manage their time.

• To catch potential problems early, encourage your children to report inappropriate chat in game and to tell you if anything in the game makes them feel worried or uncomfortable.

Visit https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/ for more information and support

It's never easy to know how to keep our children safe when they aren't with us, and sometimes even when are, if we don't know what's happening on their devices. Who are they talking to, what are they doing, are they okay? If you need help to find some answers, don't despair... click on the link below for support and advice.

https://parentsafe.lgfl.net/