Online Safety
Access to the internet, is so easy for children today. If your child has access to a computer, a smart phone, iPad or other internet ready device, chances are they will have to deal with tricky situations on the internet. Tricky situations could include, viewing material that is not age appropriate, falling victim to cyberbullying or many other potentially harmful scenarios.
At Mount Carmel we teach computing units that address online safety and help improve your child's awarenss. In addition, keeping safe online is covered through our PSHE scheme of work with each year group accessing age appropriate online safety material which provide our pupils with the skills they need to keep themselves safe. Furthermore, we shine a light on online safety with a focus each half term on a particular area of online safety: assemblies are delivered and children are asked to think about these messages and sometimes complete some work around them in the classroom.
At home, it is important that you monitor your child's exposure to the internet. We have seen a big increase in children setting up social media profiles, YouTube profiles and playing online games that are not age appropriate. We encourage parents to check the age ratings of apps, websites and games that children are accessing and ensure you monitor regularly. Additionally, it is important that you monitor the amount of time your child is spending on devices and ensure they have a period of at least 30 minutes without devices before sleep.
At school, we do all we can to filter out any inappropriate websites and images through the filtering systems that we have set up on our IT network. We also use a filtering system called Senso in order to safeguard all of our pupils. Senso alerts our safeguarding team immedaitely if children are attempting to access inappropriate content or typing words or phrases that could be a potential safeguarding concern. Our safeguarding team act on these appropriately and support children and their families where necessary.
Please see our Online Safety Policy for further information on how we ensure the safety of our children whilst using the internet. Within this policy, you will find an acceptable use agreement which we ask parents and pupils to sign at the start of each academic year.
For more information about how we keep your child safe at school, please read our Fair Use Policy on our Computing Policy page.
Extra resources and further reading...
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre
Child Exploitation and Online Protection’s (CEOP) Advice and Reporting Centre:
Think you Know—for parents and pupils on staying safe online
