Online Safety Resource For Parent/Carers

Help parents understand your school’s online safety approach with a clear guide to filtering and monitoring by Schools Broadband

Keeping Children Safe Online

Clear parent/carer communication is an important part of helping children stay safe online. To make this easier, we have created a ready-to-use, parent-friendly information sheet that schools can copy, personalise and share with their parent/carer community.

Written in plain English and designed to reflect the school’s voice, the template explains how filtering and monitoring help prevent access to illegal, inappropriate or potentially harmful content. You can use it as an email to parents, include it in your newsletter, or add it to your website. Simply edit the bracketed sections to add your school name and DSL contact details if needed.

Online Safety Template For Parent/Carer Communications:

Copy and paste the template below, then personalise the bracketed sections for your school before sharing with parents and carers. 

Important: If you do not take our Monitor service, please ensure you remove the Monitor section from the template before sharing.

Keeping children safe online at [Insert School Name]

At [Insert School Name], safeguarding is one of the most important responsibilities we hold, which also means safeguarding our students in the online world. As you know, children now use the internet for multiple activities including learning, creativity and collaboration, but with that, there are also potential risks we need to guard against.

The Department for Education states that schools and colleges have a statutory duty to keep children safe both on and offline and that we should ensure appropriate filtering and monitoring is in place in our school. [Insert School Name] work with the specialist safeguarding and security provider Schools Broadband, who provide us with the tools we need to keep your children safe and ensure that any potential safeguarding concerns are identified and addressed promptly.

Below is a short summary of the tools we deploy.

Online Filtering

We have an age-appropriate web filtering service to help prevent access to online content that is illegal, inappropriate or potentially harmful. In practice, this means the filter blocks known unsafe websites and content, including content that is unsuitable for children and prevents accidental exposure to harmful material while pupils are researching or browsing for learning.

Online Monitoring 

The DfE makes a clear distinction between filtering and monitoring: whereas filtering is preventative and helps stop pupils reaching harmful content in the first place, monitoring is reactive and involves real-time alerts to help our teachers spot concerning activity so that we can respond appropriately and call in our specialist safeguarding staff if necessary. Our monitoring solution is also able to capture and assess risks even when a device is offline, ensuring no gaps in our monitoring.

Safeguarding Concerns

If we receive an alert that suggests a pupil may be at risk, our staff follow the school’s safeguarding procedures and involve our Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), as needed. This is part of the school’s wider safeguarding responsibilities, which include recognising that children can be harmed online as well as offline.

Protecting your children at home  

Try to talk regularly about online life, set age-appropriate boundaries, and use parental controls where possible. If you need further help and advice you might find some of the links below useful:

 

If you ever have concerns about something that has happened online, please contact [Insert School Contact/DSL Name] we would always rather know and help early.

 

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