The National Curriculum sets the expectation for children to become digitally literate, being able to use, express themselves and develop their ideas through the use of digital technology in order to prepare them for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world. It is also a requirement that children are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of digital technology.

E-Safety encompasses digital technologies and electronic communications such as mobile phones as well as collaboration tools and personal publishing services. It highlights the need to educate pupils about the benefits and risks of using digital technologies and services, providing safeguarding awareness to enable users to remain safe, legal and control their online experience. This e-safety policy will operate in conjunction with other policies including those for Computing / ICT curriculum, Safeguarding, Data Protection and Acceptable Use Agreement to ensure that all school stakeholders are aware of how they can contribute to e-safety.

Online Safety Resources for Parents and Carers

If you have any e-Safety concerns please speak to your child’s class teacher.

The following websites have some very useful information for you to read and share with your children:

Social Networking

Social networking sites allow registered members to set up personal profiles and then communicate with friends, and, if they choose, not personally known individuals who share their personal interests. Chat sites for teenagers are usually free to join and open to young people and adults (sites such as Facebook have a minimum age limit of 13 for registered users).

A user will have their own homepage, which details their personal details (age, location, marital status, for example) alongside a picture and other details about themselves – the music they like, their favourite movie, the football team they support, etc. They can then utilise their membership to send messages to friends, download games and applications, share photos and music downloads, and chat in real-time.

Users can also join groups, publicise events and invite other users to attend, or start their own blogs. In the case of Facebook and Twitter, they can also provide frequent status updates, broadcasting to those in their networks what they’re up to or how they’re feeling. Perhaps most importantly, members create a listing of friends which allows them to communicate online and gives mutual access to more private content (such as photos).