The National College have produced a series of guides for parents to equip you with the knowledge, skills and confidence to keep children safe online. The guides are titled "What Parents Need to Know About ... " and include popular games and apps like Snapchat, Whatsapp, FIFA 23, Roblox, Spotify.  As parent guides are published we will add them for your information.

Our children use the Internet on a regular basis as part of their learning.  In school we now have regular ‘e-safety’ activities to remind pupils of the importance of keeping themselves safe online.

At home, sometimes children can be given unsupervised access to the Internet. This, potentially, allows them to access all kinds of society (both good and bad) and bring them virtually into their homes.

Click the link below for ‘Internet Matters’ information to help you to find out more about what your children might be doing online and give you some simple, practical and easy advice on the steps you can take as a parent to keep them as safe as possible.  Also for tips to help children become more digitally savvy and get the best from their online world.

Useful Links for parents

The internet for many parents can be a daunting place but to our children it is a necessity of life.  Access to the internet has never been so vast and continues to spread with the increasing popularity of tablets devices and access through mobile phones.  To support you in protecting your child on line there are some useful links below to sites with tips and guidance:

Merseyside Police: Safety Online

https://www.merseyside.police.uk/advice-and-protection/safety-online/

Internet matters

https://www.internetmatters.org/

Digital Parenting magazine

The Parent Zone and Vodafone have just released their latest Digital Parenting magazine it contains lots of information and tips for parents about what their kids are doing online/ on their smartphones and how they can help to protect their children. Its free for schools to order via the link below and you can order as many copies as you would like. There is also an electronic version available in the link which could be added to your website or sent out via school Twitter feed.

http://www.theparentzone.co.uk/vodafone_digital_parenting_order_form/5248

A Parents’ Guide to Facebook

Would you know whether your son/ daughters profile is set to public or private? Would you know how to check? Do you know what POS stands for when children are online chatting (Parent Over Shoulder)? Do you know what Phishing is? Facebook is very popular amongst young people (and many adults) this guide is produced annually to keep parents up to date with tips for keeping their children safe when using Facebook and informing them of the latest trends for Facebook usage.

http://www.connectsafely.org/pdfs/fbparents.pdf

Cyber Bullying

Cyberbullying is becoming more prevalent amongst children and young people when they are online, particularly as the popularity of online gaming continues to increase. To help parents deal with any incidents of cyberbullying or if you think your child maybe a victim of online bullying there is advice and guidance for you as a parent and how to deal with such scenarios.

http://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/advice/parents-carers.aspx

CEOP (Child On-Line Protection) Parents Area

This site offers advice and guidance for all types of online behaviours be it on line gaming, social networking, sharing and much more. Your children will be familiar with the child version of this site as it used in school you could perhaps ask them to help you with navigating through it.

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/