Online Safety

At St James CE Primary School, we believe that educating children about being safe online is crucial part of growing up in the 21st Century. Our Computing curriculum has online safety embedded throughout, focusing on identifying some of the risks of using the internet and how it keeps you safe. It also forms part of our PSHE education and is regularly discussed in class and in assemblies.

Be Safe Online at Home

There are many ways you can help with being safe online at home. With all types of devices in the home now being internet connected, it is more important than ever to protect yourself and your family from potential issues online.

The following links provide lots of useful information and tips:

Online Safety Over the Summer Holidays

Safety Net Parents Guide

Thinkuknow Parent Helpsheet

https://parentinfo.org/

https://tutorful.co.uk/guides/how-to-keep-kids-safe-online

Home Broadband, Public Wifi and Mobile Phones

All of Britain’s major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mobile Phone Operators now provide filtering systems that you can manage. This allows you to block any potentially harmful content from entering your home or mobile device.

A lot of the UK’s public wi-fi services now use the “Friendly wifi” branding to signify those connections that have filtered services to protect children.

For more information please visit the following site

Broadband and Mobile Networks – Internet Matters

Video Games and Apps

Video Games are rated by PEGI, the Pan European Gaming Information Group. These are legally binding ratings in the EU. It is illegal for a store to knowingly sell an underage child a video game.

Games consoles and mobile devices that can play games all have parental control systems that can limit who your child can talk to online, what games and movies they can watch based on rating, as well as systems to limit the number of hours in a day, week or month the consoles are played for. Some even have hour limitations, so they can’t play between certain hours of the day.

Please visit the Internet Matters section on how to setup and manage games consoles for more information

It can also be hard to decide whether a new app or game is appropriate for your child. It is worth remembering that to protect vulnerable children, most social networking sites have a minimum age policy of 13. We would also encourage parents to ‘friend’ their children and add themselves to group chats so they can monitor activity.

These websites are useful tools in deciding which games and apps to allow on your child’s device. They give age ratings, descriptions of their features and include ratings on different aspects of safety and suitability.

www.net-aware.org.uk (also available as a smartphone app)

www.commonsensemedia.org

www.askaboutgames.com

familygamerTV (YouTube channel)

This site also gives information on how to limit or block in-app purchases on different devices:

https://pegi.info/page/game-purchases

Devices

Children are being given access to mobile devices at a younger and younger age, and many parents don’t know how to put controls on their tablets and laptops to protect their children from age inappropriate materials.

These controls won’t stop all internet content, just content available from app stores such as the Apple App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Store so need to be used in tandem with other tools such as internet filtering provided by your ISP.

Internet Matters has a great article to explain how to setup Parental Controls for Windows 7, 8, 10, Mac OS X, iOS and Android.