Online Safety

Online safety is something we take very seriously at Heath Primary School and we actively want to support children and parents on ways to keep safe online.

The internet and technology develops and changes constantly at a rapid rate. For some people, it can feel overwhelming trying to keep up with all the changes and how all the latest technology works. Here we have some documents and useful websites that can help you with this.

We have also added our acceptable use of the internet document that children must adhere to when working on computers and using the internet.

Our school online safety lead is Mr Daniel Ingleby. The ICT team work closely with Mr Ingleby and are responsible for delivering online safety information to pupils. Our safeguarding governors are Jenny Calver and Clare Dungey.

Parental Membership for National Online Safety

As a National Online Safety Certified School, families of children at the school can now have free access to an excellent range of courses, guides and other materials. Click here for further details and the link to the free membership.

Online Safety at Heath

Online safety is taught each half as part of computing lessons. It is also part of our PSHE curriculum. Online Safety is often defined as the safe and responsible use of technology. This includes the use of the internet and also other means of communication using electronic media (e.g. text messages, online messaging, social media, gaming devices, e-mail etc.). In practice, online safety is as much about behaviour as it is electronic security. This highlights the need to educate children and young people about the benefits, risks and responsibilities of using information technology. Children must be supported to develop strategies to manage and respond to online risk so they can be empowered to build resilience, and make the most of all of the fantastic opportunities that the digital world offers.

There are a number of systems in place at our school that help to keep the children safe, including anti-virus and web-filtering software. Our systems allow us to filter, monitor, analyse and review the children's use of programmes and the internet, and the web-filtering software works in real-time, meaning that there is never a delay between dangerous content going live and it being blocked.

Digital Ambassadors

We are currently recruiting our new digital ambassadors! Following our Spring Term online safety assembly, we are inviting children from Years 4, 5 and 6 to apply the positions. Please see the ParentMail for more details.

2023 Online Safety Parental Survey

FINDINGS/FEEDBACK

ACTION POINTS/COMMENTS

Thank you for all of the valuable feedback that you provided.

The survey found the following trends:

The older the children are, the more likely they are to have online access outside of school.
The older the children are, the more likely they are to have access to a smartphone.
The majority of those who responded said that they have spoken to their child about potential risks online and have set rules for their child to follow.
The majority of those who responded use parental controls and are aware that they can adjust the privacy and security settings of the apps/websites that their children use.
The majority of those who responded are confident that they have control over what their children access online.
The older the children are, the more confident parents are that they are able to identify online risks.
The older the children are, the more confident parents are that they will report unsuitable content to a trusted adult.
Of the options presented, an online safety ParentMail was voted as the most useful way of finding out more about online safety.

The feedback provided is really useful as it helps to paint a picture of the online habits of the children when they are at home. It has also enabled us to gain an understanding of the knowledge and habits of the parents, too. This will feed into our decision making for how we teach online safety at school.

We are delighted to see that parents are having conversations with their children at home about online safety and are helping to create a safe environment by setting rules, monitoring the children's access and making the most of tools such as parental controls and using privacy and security settings.

We are committed to supporting our parents with online safety. In addition to the current tools that we use, we will be publishing a regular online safety update that will be sent out via ParentMail.