Online Safety

Find out about how we keep our children safe in a digital world.

Online Safety and child safety online is a key feature of the work we do to keep our young people safe. We cover aspects of this within our Computing and PSHE program, in addition to offering training to parents. All staff receive yearly E-safety training deliver by our own staff who are trained as CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) ambassadors.

Online Safety Blogs

Percy Hedley School also produces a dedicated Online Safety Blog. You can find past issues by clicking the link below.

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Online Safety Resources

Here is a range of resources to help you keep your child safe online.

Maria held online safety training for parents and carers in February 2024. You can watch it by clicking the button below.

Our IT lead Maria held some Parental Controls training for parents and carers for Internet Safety Day 2024. You can watch it by clicking the button below.

Maria our computing lead for Upper School and Lizzie our computing lead for Lower School began their training for the updated Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) award. If you would like more information and support on child exploitation and online sexual abuse, see below.

As some of you will know the iconic Fifa 23 was released at the end of September for a number of games platforms. The National Online Safety Centre have produced some clear guidance leaflets for Parents and Carers. Explaining the features and giving clear advice.

We teach children about cybersecurity. Identifying the risks and also how they can protect themselves. They look at some of the threats that cause security breaches and how to stop them.

Technological advances have allowed intimate partner violence to take new forms, including access to private information, control over online accounts, and the use of electronic devices to track one’s whereabouts.

Childnet Supporting Young People With SEND

The internet is a fantastic enabler for all of our children. Allowing children to access through VOCAS, adapted hardware a myriad of resources.They can keep in contact with their friends who live in different parts of the country. Supports great communication and great pleasure of games, music etc.  With use of the wonderous world wide web comes great responsibility.

Children need to be taught and take responsibility for their online presence.

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Acceptable Use Policy

Each year we ask our staff and pupils to sign an acceptable use agreement.  This agreement explains what pupils and staff can do on our school devices, and what we expect of them when they are using our equipment.  It also states our expectations around mobile phone use and smart watches when in school.

You can find a copy of the policy here, with the appendixes which show the agreements that our pupils sign.  Pupils only sign if they are able to use devices independently.  There are three different versions of the agreement, one for our older pupils, one for our younger pupils and one which has symbol support for those who need some extra help with their understanding.

If you have any questions about this please get in touch with your class teams, or our Online Safety Leads Maria or Lizzie.

ICT and Acceptable Use Policy  >

Online Safety Filtering and Monitoring

On our training day in September all staff completed training on the updates to the new ‘Keeping Children Safe In Education’ document, and how this applies to the children in our school.

One of the new updates is around how we use filtering and monitoring software within school to ensure that our children are not exposed to any content which is not appropriate to them.  We use a system called Sophos to do this, and this is alerted to many words and phrases that may provide content unsuitable for our pupils to see.  These lists are updated regularly, and the words are tested by our online safety team within school, and within our IT team.  We ensure that we test all devices which belong to our school including iPad, Laptops and computers and this is completed half termly by our in school online safety team. This work is monitored by our Safeguarding Governor Paul Cook.

Where pupils or staff access searches that are unsuitable for them the online safety team are alerted to allow them to check in about the content and context of the search and ensure the safety of everyone in school.  A record of this is kept ensuring that any trends or training needs are identified quickly, and support can be put into place where appropriate.

This term we will be discussing this more within our Online Safety blog which our Online safety lead Maria writes, we will also be providing you with the opportunity to attend or watch a recording of, some training that we will providing on cyber security within the home and how you can help your young person to stay safe away from school.

Our Online Safety Leads in school are Maria Mawdesley and Lizzie Lee. Please contact them on m.mawdesley@percyhedley.org.uk or lizzie.lee@percyhedley.org.uk if you want any more information or need support with anything online safety related.

Training for Parents

The online safety group have been busy making designing our training schedule for staff, students and parents. Please use the below link to let us know of any training needs you may have or any information you may need around this issue for yourself or your family. Training will be recorded over the year and added as links to the website for you to watch in your own time.  When videos are uploaded we will let you know through the blog and through a text to parents. This link will also come out in a text to parents and will feature in Johns blog.

Please use the link at the top of the form to change the language or use the text to speech button to support accessibility within your responses.

Please let us know your training needs via this form  >

Ask Us Anything In Confidence About Online Safety

Please use the link below to ask us a question about all things online safety, your questions come to the online safety team only and we will answer or signpost you to the most relevant information.  If you would like a personal response please include the relevant contact details.  If not questions will be used anonymously to complete a FAQ’s section within the blog and the website.  If you do not want yours to appear in this just let us know.

Please use the link at the top of the form to change the language or use the text to speech button to support accessibility within your responses.

Please ask us anything via this form  >

Want To Know More?

Online Safety Policy

Take a look at our Online Safety Policy.

Policies and Procedures

Take a look at all of our policies and procedures in our documents center.

Safeguarding

Safeguarding children and protecting them from harm is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play.