It’s important to raise awareness widely of the opportunities which technologies offer as well as the risks and e-safety issues which are associated.
All stakeholders, including governors, pupils, staff, parents and senior staff should be aware of the issues. Good times to discuss e-safety issues and raise awareness are assemblies, workshops and training sessions.
Awareness-raising needs to be a continual process not a one-off exercise.
Children and young people
These are examples of the ways awareness can be raised amongst young people:
- Posters placed around the school
- Reminders of e-safety issues and acceptable use wherever computers are used
- Discussion of e-safety issues at relevant points in the curriculum
- E-safety assemblies and theme days
- School involvement with events such as Safe Internet Day and Anti-Bullying Week
Staff
Awareness can be raised amongst staff through:
- The induction programme
- Regular training sessions on e-safety issues
- Updates at staff meetings
- Reminders on the acceptable use policy for staff
- Agenda items at governing body meetings
Parents and the community
Awareness can be raised with parents and the wider community through:
- Sharing your AUP for others to use or adapt
- Holding e-safety sessions and ‘how to…’ workshops
- Presentations at parents’ evenings and during other visits
- Permanent information in the reception area
- Newsletter reminders
- An e-safety area on the school’s website or VLE
Case study
Paul Coulthard, Subject Leader for ICT, Gateacre Community Comprehensive School
We believe we have a responsibility to educate everybody about e-safety and we believe that families have to understand e-safety if they’re going to work with their children and support the children.
We started off with coffee mornings and evening workshops so that we can really get parents on-board, irrelevant of how digitally savvy they are. We talk to parents about asking their children to make them friends on Facebook so that parents can check who their children have as online friends.
These are simple things that us ICT practitioners know about but a lot of the parents aren’t aware of them. We try and bring them on-board. It’s a partnership between the parents, us and the students.
