Important Message: Online Safety

Dear Parents/Carers

During the last 18 months there have been changes to the way we all live our lives and young people have been spending more time online. Now more than ever students are reliant on mobile phones and social media platforms. We have also recently launched chromebooks to our new year 7 cohort and it feels appropriate to address some of these platforms in a letter to you. It is important to remember that we allow students to bring mobile phones into school as a privilege. Unfortunately, like many schools, we have found ourselves in challenging situations due to some students’ misuse of social media both in and out of school. Social media sites are not accessible through our school Wifi, so any students accessing these throughout the day are doing so through their own 3G/4G/5G network.

Students should have their phones switched off and out of sight in school to ensure that there are no interruptions to learning. Phones will be confiscated if they are seen by staff.

Keeping students safe online is very much a partnership between us at Strood Academy and yourselves. The internet is quickly developing and changing, therefore it is paramount that we understand the risks and are able to educate our children to keep safe while they are online.

As a school, we have purchased a subscription to the National Online Safety (NOS) platform to provide online safety support, education and advice for staff, parents, students and governors.

If you would like to gain further insight on how to keep yourself and children safe whilst online, please sign up to your free NOS account to access the many useful parental modules on offer. NOS have created a wealth of resources for parents and carers. Please browse through the categories to access appropriate information, videos or courses.

We would recommend completing the Annual Certificate in Online safety for Parents & Carers. This is split into 2 age groups, so please choose the most appropriate for your household.

NOS – Survey

In order for us to assess the quality of this service and receive your feedback, we would be grateful if you could take a few moments to complete the short survey.

Additional support and advice on keeping children safe:

ThinkUKnow: Families can visit www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents to access advice and support on how to keep children safe from sexual abuse, both online and off.

CEOP- Reporting abuse: www.ceop.police.uk – The Child Exploitation and Online

Protection Centre (CEOP) delivers a multi-agency service dedicated to tackling the abuse and exploitation of children. CEOP was set up in April 2006 and has received over 50,000 reports of abuse to date. A key focus of CEOP is the ThinkUKnow website and education strategy to teach young people, teachers and parents/carers about e-Safety and a “Report Abuse” button to report online abuse or suspicious behaviour and can be used by adults (parents/carers, professionals etc) and young people.

Internet Matters: https://www.internetmatters.org – Internet matters is a non-profit organisation which gives parents key information about how to keep their children safe online. Online issues such as Cyberbullying, Online Reputation, Sexting and many more are covered in detail.