Online Safety

At Marden Lodge Primary School & Nursery keeping our children safe online is our highest priority. E-Safety is taught at the start of every academic year and every term during Computing lessons. It is also taught throughout the year, on a regular basis during our wider curriculum lessons when staff regularly talk to the children about online safety and how to stay safe online.

The internet is a great tool for learning, communicating and collaborating and as a school we use security filters to support our children’s safe use of the internet. We would recommend that parents have similar restrictions at home.

At Home

A number of children may have access have different social media accounts, including Instagram and Facebook. Most social media accounts have age restrictions of 13 year + (this is true of Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook), in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In our experience, children are not socially mature enough to use these types of social media and therefore we would advise parents to adhere to the age restrictions. If your child does use social media, or other communications online, we would recommend talking with your child about e-safety and would encourage you to monitor their online activity.

Help children stay safe online:

1. Have the conversation early and often

2. Explore online together

3. Know who your child is talking to online

4. Set rules and agree boundaries - make links to the SMART Rules that we use at school.

5. Make sure that content is age-appropriate

6. Use parental controls to filter, restrict, monitor or report content

7. Check they know how to use privacy settings and reporting tools

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Online safety and Fortnite

The age rating for Fortnite is PEGI 12, due to ‘frequent scenes of mild violence. It is not suitable for persons under 12 years of age’ and there are also a number of other potential issues you should be aware of:

- As Fortnite is an online game you will play against players of different ages from across the world. You cannot turn the in game chats off or choose who you play against

- Fortnite does feature violence when players are in combat with each other

- Although Battle Royale is free to play, other aspects of the game are not. There are packs which give you different access to the full game and extensions, bonuses and weapons

More information and a parent’s guide can be found here: https://www.saferinternet.org.uk/blog/parents-guide-fortnite-battle-royale and a Parents Guide.

Other links you may find useful:

Glossary of terms:https://www.internetmatters.org/resources/glossary/

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/advice-and-info/share-

aware.pdf

https://www.internetmatters.org/

Internet Matters videos with strategies for supporting children’s E-Safety: