Today’s pupils are growing up in an increasingly complex world, living their lives seamlessly on and offline. This presents many positive and exciting opportunities, but also challenges and risks. 

The online world develops and changes at great speed. New opportunities, challenges and risks are appearing all the time. This can make it difficult to stay up to date with the latest devices, platforms, apps, trends and related threats.  It is therefore important to focus on knowledge and behaviours that can help pupils to navigate the online world safely and confidently regardless of the device, platform or app.

Key learning at school

At school, we teach about appropriate online behaviour enabling pupils to understand what acceptable and unacceptable online behaviour looks like. We teach pupils that the same standards of behaviour and honesty apply on and offline, including the importance of respect for others. We also teach pupils to recognise unacceptable behaviour in others.

We help children to know how to identify possible online risks and make informed decisions about how to act. The focus is on helping pupils assess a situation, think through the consequences of acting in different ways and decide on the best course of action.

Knowing how and when to seek support, enabling pupils to understand safe ways in which to seek support if they are concerned or upset by something they have seen online.

Pupils often spend significant periods of time accessing the internet at home. We know that children sometimes have greater expertise in navigating online services than adults in the home. There are numerous websites offering advice to help you support your child.

The following links may be helpful:

www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents

saferinternet.org.uk/guide-and-resource/parents-and-carers

www.childnet.com/parents-and-carers/