Online Safety

Teaching children how to be safe online is vital work that feeds into all of our teaching at Penwortham. Alongside our curriculum, we train groups of pupils to become 'Digital Leaders' so that they can support their peers and lead assemblies and workshops to teach others about staying safe online.

If you want to report harmful content or online abuse to make a report.

On this page you will find information about:

Online Safety teaching at Penwortham
Safer Internet Day 2024
Parent Support

Online Safety Teaching at Penwortham

At Penwortham, we follow the UK Council for Internet Safety's 'Education for a Connected World Framework' to support our online safety training. Online safety is taught within Computing and Wellbeing lessons, as well as our annual focus during Safer Internet Day. The framework focuses on the following 8 strands:

Some of the key messages we give the children are:

They should be supervised when using devices (for example EYFS and KS1 children being monitored and supervised while online and KS2 children not having phones or consoles in private rooms). We link this to Article 3: A child's best interests must always be considered.
They need to be responsible users of the internet and think before they write, post or share. We link this to Articles 13, 14 and 15: All children have the right to express themselves, as long as this does not harm others.
They should have time limits for their access to the internet. We link this to Article 29: All children have the right to reach their full potential.
Age limits on games and social media are set for a reason, and should be respected. We link this to Article 31: All children have the right to play and relax and also Article 19: All children have the right to be protected from harm.
They should aim to spend lots of time doing other things for a healthy lifestyle. We share the Children's Commissioner 'Digital-5-a-Day.'

We ask all children, parents, staff and volunteers to read and sign an Acceptable Use Policy annually.

You can view our Online Safety Policy here.

Safer Internet Day 2024

Last year some of our Digital Leaders had the opportunity to go to the BT Tower to present an activity for delegates at the Safer Internet Day conference run by Childnet. They did a brilliant job and shared their experience in The Globe.

They were delighted to receive a letter of thanks from Childnet's CEO, Will Gardner, and from the Childnet leads they had been working with.

penwortham sid24 thank you.pdf

Parent Support

We believe that technology can bring so many varied benefits to children's lives and is a brilliant source of information and entertainment. However, all online activity carries risks, so we want to ensure our children know how to stay safe online.

There is a lot of information and resources available to help you keep your children safe online. We have collected here some of the most useful links together here.

Parent Safe: Has the most up-to-date information for parents
NSPCC: Keeping children safe online
Internet Matters: Parental controls
CEOP: For reporting concerns
Parent Zone: Be Internet Legends resources
Common Sense Media: App, game and film guides
CBBC Stay Safe: For engaging your children with the topic
Smartphone Free Childhood: A parent movement that our school is engaging with - more information to follow
Tiktok: to find out more about this app, please read this guide.