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Keeping your child safe online

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As a parent you’ll know how important the Internet is to children and young people. They use it to learn, socialise and express themselves in a range of creative ways. This may be through sharing photos and videos, blogging, gaming, or even developing their own apps. It is a place of amazing opportunities.

However, it is important to talk your child about why and how they should keep safe online. It is important that we work together to educate children so that they do not put themselves in vulnerable positions while using social media or any other communication apps such as Whatsapp or Snapchat.

In the College we take e-safety very seriously and will deliver assemblies to each year group in order to reinforce how dangerous the internet can be if proper precautions are not taken.

Below is a list of e-safety precautions to discuss with your child.

  • Children under the age of 13 should not have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat or Kik accounts. The content can be of an adult like nature and other users may expect you to be older.
  • Make sure any social media accounts are set to private. Social networking sites such as Facebook are used by children to share information, photos and just about everything they do! Encourage your child to set their privacy settings to private so that only people they have given their user name to can view their profile and information.
  • Accept only people that you know in the real world. You should never accept invitations or friend requests from someone you do not know.
  • Never share personal information or photos with people that you don’t know. That includes things like which school you go to, your address and your full name.
  • Make sure your password is secure and that other people can’t easily work out. Some people with malicious intentions like to hack into other people’s accounts and write or post messages pretending to be the owner of the account. Make it harder by including a mixture of numbers, capital letters and symbols is good practice. E.g. An1ma!s
  • Do not write messages or post things to intentionally hurt other people’s feelings. Similarly threatening violence online is never a good idea and often creates lots of problems in the real world.
  • When you are using a laptops or computer it should be in a communal area where your screen can be easily seen by others such as siblings or parents.
  • Report anything that you see and think is inappropriate on social media. That could include a message someone has sent you, a post someone has sent you or written on your page or an image or video that has been sent to you. Report it straight away via the report button on the page concerned and tell a responsible adult you can trust.

If any parent or carer would like any additional advice or support, please feel free to contact Mr Tijjani or Mr McCaughan on the main school number.

Alternatively, you may find the following websites useful:

http://www.ceop.police.uk

There is also a direct link on the school website. Just click on the CEOP logo.

http://www.thinkuknow.co.uk