22 March 2024
Dear Parents/Carers,
Online Safety in the Holidays
With the Easter holiday upon us young people will potentially have more unsupervised time, a lot of which may be spent online. Whilst the internet is a great tool for keeping in touch with friends and family, learning new skills and exploring cultural pursuits, it can also pose significant risk to young people. We would like to remind you, once again, of the possible risks that this may pose.
You should particularly be aware of the risk of:
- your child seeing offensive images and messages;
- the presence of strangers who may be there to 'groom' young people;
- your child being encouraged to participate in dangerous online challenges or harmful activities
- cyberbullying (bullying using digital technology)
- identity theft and other scams
You will know from our ICT policy (extract below) that the school uses a monitoring system that monitors the language used, the keywords searched and the sites that students access or attempt to access whilst using any school device, whether in school or at home.
ICT Acceptable Use: Student Policy 2
Students should be aware that the school uses a monitoring and filtering system.
Under normal circumstances this is only monitored by school staff throughout the school day.
We, therefore, would like to remind you of the responsibility that parents and carers have, and the crucial role they should play in discussions regarding internet safety and in monitoring their child’s online activity outside of school hours and throughout the holidays.
The link below will take you to some very practical advice from the NSPCC.
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/safeguarding-child-protection/social-media-and-online-safety
If you are worried that your child may be at risk of significant harm or that a crime has been committed, you must contact the police immediately.
Kind regards
M.A. Nutt
Assistant Principal
