Online Safety

Keeping Children Safe in Education (Part 2) makes clear the importance and outlines the key aspects to consider to ensure that online safety is a running and interrelated theme in ensuring a whole school approach to safeguarding.

This involves children being taught about how to keep themselves and others safe online; as well as ensuring children are safe online when they are learning in school or when education is taking place remotely.

Keeping children safe online not only involves all staff confidently working to ensure children are safe online when learning at school but also engagement and communication with parents to understand how this is done and how they can support this.  

In addition to the guidance in Keeping Children Safe in Education, schools in Shropshire may also find the following useful:

Emerging themes in Online Safety: Please regularly review:

Preventing Cybercrime: For information on the local support and intervention available on please visit the Preventing cybercrime by children (Cyberchoices) | Shropshire Learning Gateway pages at the bottom of this page.

Key websites (including keeping up to date with research and resources)

In addition to the below; please see links on this page (to the right and at the bottom) for the most up to date research/information published by (summaries of publications from) the below.    

 

Model Policy Template
Schools should all have an online safety policy.  

Shropshire Council Shropshire Schools HR Service have developed a model policy for subscribing schools to adapt if they wish. The model policy can be found at: https://www.shropshirelg.net/schools-human-resources-payroll-and-wellbeing/schools-hr-advice/policies-and-procedures/. 

For non-subscribing schools, online safety templates are also available for free from South West Grid For Learning: Free Online Safety Policy Templates for Schools | SWGfL.

Teaching children how to keep themselves and other safe online:  Please visit our page on Teaching children how to keep themselves and others safe | Shropshire Learning Gateway 

Guidance/Self-assessment tools to ensure a whole School Approach to Online Safety

Tools to enable schools to carry out their annual reviews of online safety can be found at:

Staff Training 

All staff should be able to spot the signs that a child might be experiencing harm online. The following video may be helpful to communicate this: Spot the signs of online abuse (youtube.com)

It is strongly recommended that all staff and DSL's complete additional online safety training on top of the core training completed. 

Local online safety training includes:

National organisations that provide online safety training for individuals/groups:

Cyber security training should be completed by anyone who has access to the school network. Training is also available from the National Cyber Security Centre: Cyber security training for school staff - NCSC.GOV.UK

Supporting families to keep their children safe online

Keeping children safe online is a team effort between schools and families. Schools may wish to consider sending out or promoting regular online safety newsletters or access to courses for families.

West Mercia Police offer FREE parent/guardian exploitation and online safety sessions. Please visit: Exploitation and vulnerability training | West Mercia Police

National organisations that provide these include:

Links to further resources

Online Safety and Generative AI

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Preventing cybercrime by children (Cyberchoices)

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