Parkside School recognises that technology and the internet are an integral part of everyday life for children who use for it learning and socialising. However, technology and the internet have unique risks associated with them. Online Safety is therefore a key consideration within the school safeguarding policies and procedures.
Keeping Children Safe in Education (2024) categorises online safety risks into four areas (the four C’s):
- Content: Exposure to harmful, inappropriate, or illegal content
- Contact: Harmful online interactions with other users
- Conduct: Online behaviour that can cause harm
- Commerce: Risks like online gambling, phishing, inappropriate advertising and financial scams
How do Parkside help keep children safe online?:
- Online safety training, delivered to all staff as part of their annual child protection and safeguarding training.
- Staff and parents receive annual training and regular updates on online safety.
- Children are taught about online safety within the curriculum.
- Staff provide advice and guidance when issues to arise.
In addition, it is essential that children are safeguarded from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material whilst using school technology. At Parkside School we use Smoothwall Monitor Managed Service, this is a real-time, proactive digital monitoring solution that provides school with a 24/7/365 human moderated service. A small program runs silently on all computers on the school network monitoring all keystrokes. The keystrokes are analysed in real-time with any concerning words or phrases being reviewed initially by an artificial intelligence system before being escalated to a human moderator where necessary. Urgent detections are communicated to the school within minutes. In addition to the proactive alerts, all detections can be viewed by authorised members of the school Safeguarding Team using a secure online portal providing a helicopter view all users and devices.
Online Safety Advice
Here you will find links to a website which provide online safety advice to parent and children along with reporting tools that can help parents and children to report instances of online abuse, exploitation, or harmful content, both in and outside of school.
For Children
Childline – For free and confidential advice
UK Safer Internet Centre – To report and remove harmful online content
CEOP Make a Report – For advice on making a report for online abuse
Common Sense Media – Provides independent reviews, age ratings and other information about all types of media for children and their parents
For Parents
Childnet – Offers a toolkit to support parents and carers of children of any age to start discussions about their online life, and to find out where to get more help and support
Common Sense Media – Provides independent reviews, age ratings, & other information about all types of media for children and their parents
Government advice – About protecting children from specific online harms such as child sexual abuse, sexting, and cyberbullying
Internet Matters – Provides age-specific online safety checklists, guides on how to set parental controls, and practical tips to help children get the most out of their digital world
How Can I Help My Child? – Marie Collins Foundation – Sexual abuse online
London Grid for Learning – Provides support for parents and carers to keep their children safe online, including tips to keep primary aged children safe online
Stopitnow – resource from The Lucy Faithfull Foundation – Can be used by parents and carers who are concerned about someone’s behaviour, including children who may be displaying concerning sexual behaviour (not just about online)
National Crime Agency/CEOP Thinkuknow – Provides support for parents and carers to keep their children safe online
Parentzone – Provides help for parents and carers on how to keep their children safe online
Talking to your child about online sexual harassment: A guide for parents – This is the Children’s Commissioner’s parental guide on talking to their children about online sexual harassment
Report Harmful Content
If you’ve experienced or witnessed harm online we can help. Report Harmful Content can help you to report harmful content online by providing up to date information on community standards and direct links to the correct reporting facilities across multiple platforms
Under 18?
Click here for child friendly advice
Report Remove
Help for young people under 18 in the UK to confidentially report sexual images asnd videos of themselves and remove them from the internet. Childline – Report Remove
Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP):
CEOP aim to help protect children and young people from online child sexual abuse.
