E- safety Advice

“The internet is such an integral part of children’s lives these days. It opens up so many educational and social opportunities, giving them access to, quite literally, a world of information and experiences. Whether on a computer at school, a laptop at home, a games console or mobile phone, children and young people are increasingly accessing the internet whenever they can and wherever they are.

As you would protect your child in the real world, you will want to make sure that they are safe whatever they are doing. Like learning to cross the road, online safety skills are skills for life. If your child understands the risks and can make sensible and informed choices online, they can get the most from the internet and stay safe whilst doing so – particularly from those people who might seek them out to harm them.”

CEOP (Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre)

How we make Longhill High School Safe

The focus for Online Safety at Longhill High School is on education combined with appropriate safeguards to deliver an Online Safe environment for our young people.

Online Safety education is delivered in the ICT and PSHE curriculum, and is enforced by the school Acceptable Use Policy (you can find a copy in the Resources section to the right). All young people attending Longhill High School are required to sign a copy of the Acceptable Use Policy before they are given access to the Internet.

The school employs a multi-layered internet filtering system, email filtering systems and desktop monitoring software to further ensure that where possible students are prevented from coming in to contact with unsuitable content.

Longhill High School was subject to an Ofsted survey inspection focusing on eSafety in July 2009. The overall effectiveness of eSafety was judged to be good. A copy of Ofsted’s report can be found here.

In addition, emails containing confidential or privileged information sent outside the organisation are encrypted using Virtru Secure Email.

What action can I take at home?

Take a look at the websites in the Resources section to below. Many offer helpful advice for parents on eSafety at home.

There are however some simple precautions you can take:

Ensure computers connected to the internet are not in private spaces – such as bedrooms.
Discuss eSafety with all family members. Decide what is and isn’t acceptable so everybody knows what is expected.
Install some filtering software to limit the range of websites that are available. Some Internet Service Providers are able to do this for you, otherwise there is free software available such as K9 Web Protection.