E-safety

The students at Manorfield regularly use the internet as part of their education. All children have participated in e-safety lessons and activities to show children the importance of keeping themselves safe online. We use Classroom Cloud software to monitor the pages that children are viewing and searching for and have filtering software in place to ensure inappropriate webpages are blocked. School staff will communicate with parents via Class Dojo, office email and telephone. School staff will not contact pupils online directly for any circumstance.

When at home, sometimes the students access the internet unsupervised. This could possibly allow them access to a range of sites, both good and bad. It also allows interaction with all kinds of people and can allow virtual access into their homes.

Here are some tips and useful links to help you to keep your children safe online:

  • Explore e-safety sites – There are lots of links to useful e-safety sites for children in our pupil’s e-safety area. They are great fun to explore, so why not browse through them with your children?
  • Facebook / Instagram/ Snapchat/ Musical.ly– Many of these sites have a minimum age limit of 13, so our pupils should NOT be using them. However, we are aware some children use these sites and want them to be aware that all these sites have privacy settings that will protect them.
  • Keep your computer in a shared area – Where possible, set the computer up in a shared area at home so that everyone can access the wonderful sites available online.
  • Discuss- Talk to children about their online activity and make sure they are aware of the dangers online. Make sure they are aware there are people for them to talk to if they are worried about anything.

Acceptable Use

During lessons your child’s teacher will have talked through the acceptable use policy with the class. This explains how pupils are expected to use technology in school.

A copy of the rules they are expected to follow can be found here:

KS1 Code of Conduct

KS2 Acceptable Use Policy

The Acceptable Use of ICT Policies are in place to maintain safety when children are using the internet in school. As part of the online safety features in school, we use a filtering software called ‘Surf Protect’ to block inappropriate content.

Alongside this we also use monitoring software called classroom.cloud to ensure anyone using devices in school is accessing suitable content and not searching for anything inappropriate.

Internet Matters

An online safety portal is available to parents to give more information about what children might be doing online, the issues they may face and what you can do to help. This portal is www.internetmatters.org. The following link is to a youtube video introducing this portal, supported by Sophie Ellis-Baxter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz8T9jTxBDI

This website also has a link to a free app of the story ‘Digiduck’s big decision’. This is a fantastic story to read with younger children to help them understand issues online and what they can do if they face them. To access this page please follow this link; http://www.internetmatters.org/educate/digiduck.html

Some links to more information:

  • Think U Know – containing internet safety advice for those aged from 5 to 16, along with parents and teachers, this site is produced by CEOP (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre).
  • Vodafone Parents – Vodafone have lots of fantastic practical advice for parents. You can also read their ‘Digital Parenting‘ magazine.
  • Internet Safety Zone – Look in the ‘Under 13s’ section for useful safety advice and information.
  • Kidsmart – An award-winning internet safety programme for children.
  • Know IT All – lots of useful advice for keeping yourselves and your children safe on the Internet.
  • Share Aware – A site set up by the NSPCC to give information about how to keep children safe on social networking sites.

If you have any concerns for your child or another child feel free to come and talk to our e-Safety Officers (Miss Weed and Miss Williams) or Mrs Thompson (Head of School).