Online Safety for Parents

We are committed to providing access to educationally beneficial digital technologies whilst responsibly monitoring access and educating pupils, parents and staff in internet safety. Internet (aka online) safety is a significant part of the school’s wider safeguarding and anti-bullying strategies.

​The Internet is a wonderful resource. At LCS, the children love using it in many positive ways to enrich their experience of learning. We want the children to be excited about going online, but we want to equip them to be ‘safe cyber citizens’. As such, we provide resources and training to support parents in supervising use of the Internet at home.

Each student will sign an acceptable use agreement for online safety at the beginning of the year and will be reminded of the principles of this agreement throughout the year at school. Parents are encouraged to promote internet safety at home as well; the acceptable use agreements can be found below for your reference.

In addition, you may find this family online safety agreement useful.

Online Safety at LCS

​OFSTED helpfully categorise Online Safety issues into three areas of risk:

Content: what can be accessed by a user online

[being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material]

​Contact: how a user browses and shares information online

[being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users]

​Conduct: the online behaviour of a user

[personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes harm]

The online safety teaching at London Christian School takes into account all these areas of risk. We use a range of different resources and programmes to embed the teaching of Online Safety across the curriculum.

Please be assured that we use many strategies to ensure our pupils are responsible and safe in their use of computers and electronic devices. Some examples include: clear teaching in the curriculum, clear rules for using search engines, close supervision by adults during computer use, parent training workshops and teacher training in issues such as safe searches, positive digital footprints and cyber-bullying.

More information can be found in our Online Safety Policy and Acceptable Use Agreements.  You’ll find specific advice that we recently handed out at Parent Coffee Mornings below:

Things you could do at home

​Below are some tips to help you to keep your children safe online. Obviously, simply ‘locking down’ all settings is not a long term, helpful way to prepare your child for a life as a safe cyber citizen. Rather, the key is to talk to your child about dangers when they are online and discuss why they need to stay safe:

Parental settings

Computer history

Time limits

Shared areas

Safe searching

Classifications

Further resources

Parental settings

Parental settings allow you to set limitations for a range of aspects. These can include limits to your child’s access to the web, the times they can log onto the computer and which programs they can run. Often you can access these settings on your computer, or through your broadband provider. Do contact the companies whose products you use.

​Computer history

Most browsers keep a log of the sites children have gone on. Chat to your child about the different websites they have visited. Whilst some children can delete the history, and many know by the age of 12 how to do so, there are other forms of internet tracking software that override this.

Time limits

Maybe you could decide what time of the day your child has access to the internet, or arrange occasional ‘no screen nights’ to give variety to leisure habits.

Shared areas

Why not set up your computer in a shared, family area where you can easily see what is going on and when. This also provides an opportunity for your child to also see you modelling safe, responsible behaviour online.

Safe searching

Here are a few different tips for how to stay safe if you use Google as your main search engine:

​Google Safety Center – Families

​Google Safety Center – Tools

​You can also get rid of prediction within the Google Chrome address bar:

​How To Disable Search Prediction In Desktop Chrome

  1. ​Click the menu button in the top right corner (3 lines or 3 dots).
  2. Click Settings > Show Advanced Settings.
  3. Scroll down to Privacy and uncheck “Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLSs typed in the address bar.”

​​Another option is using child friendly search engines:

Swiggle

DK Findout

Classifications

The British Board of Film Classification has a fantastic webpage with loads of little details about the content you will find in films before you watch them.

They also have a really great child friendly site which is worth a look.

Common Sense Media also have a wonderful search engine for finding out content and parent reviews of specific media – including games and books.

Further resources

The above information is very general and simply forms a few ‘starter’ ideas. The links below will provide you with further information and help. They cover subjects from ‘chatting with my child’ or ‘social networking’ to ‘changing settings on Google or YouTube’.

NSPCC: Keeping children safe online

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre

O2 and NSPCC Internet Safety Resource

Childnet

Net Aware

YouTube Parents’ Guide

Managing Playstation accounts

Google Safety Centre

Parent Zone

Parent Info

Sharenting

Internet Matters

The following link includes secondary school information for parents as well but acts as a good ‘one stop shop’ for e-safety information:

London Grid for Learning – Parent resource centre

​If you are a parent and you would like to ask any questions about how we teach Online Safety within the school, please do not hesitate to contact the school office.