At Beechwood, we believe it is essential for online safety guidance to be given to the children on a regular and meaningful basis. Online safety is embedded within our curriculum and staff reinforce online safety messages across many curriculum areas.

The breadth of issues taught within online safety can be categorised into four areas of risk:

• Content: Being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful content;

• Contact: Being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users:

• Conduct: Personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; and

• Commerce: Risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams

The children are given help and support to recognise and avoid online safety risks and build their resilience. Our school approach to online safety helps to safeguard children from potentially harmful and inappropriate material online.

Online Safety at Beechwood:

• A planned online safety curriculum is provided as part of the Computing, RSHE and other curriculum areas, and is regularly revisited.
• Key online safety messages are reinforced as part of a planned programme of assemblies, workshops and displays.
• Children are taught in all lessons to be critically aware of the materials or content they access on-line and be guided to validate the accuracy of information
• Children are made aware of where to seek advice or help if they experience problems when using the internet and related technologies; i.e. parents/carers, teachers/trusted staff members, or an organisation such as Childline/CEOP report abuse button.
• In lessons, children are guided to sites checked as suitable for their use and processes are in place for dealing with any unsuitable material that is found in internet searches.
• Where children are allowed to freely search the internet, staff are vigilant in monitoring the content of the websites the children visit.

• Children access the Times Tables Rockstars, Accelerated Reader, Spelling Shed, Maths Shed and Numbots websites/apps to support their learning. Usernames and passwords are used to log in to these site. Once logged in, children are able to play games against their classmates or other anonymised users. There is no way of interacting verbally or via text with others through this website/app.

For children with additional needs or vulnerable groups, the school staff are aware that some children may require additional teaching including reminders, prompts and further explanation to reinforce their existing knowledge and understanding of online safety issues.  

Where a child has poor social understanding, careful consideration is given to group interactions when raising awareness of online safety.  Internet activities are planned and well managed for these children.

Filtering and Monitoring

We ensure that the infrastructure and network is as safe and secure as is reasonably possible.

• Technical systems are managed in ways that ensure that the school meets recommended technical requirements.

• All users have clearly defined access rights to  systems and devices.

• Internet access is filtered for all users. Illegal content is filtered by the filtering provider - Smoothwall. Content lists are regularly updated and internet use is logged and regularly monitored by the School Business Manager.

• Internet filtering and monitoring ensures that children are safe from terrorist and extremist material when accessing the internet.

• Staff regularly monitor and record the activity of users on the school's technical systems and users are made aware of this in the acceptable use agreement.

• Appropriate security measures are in place to protect the servers, firewalls, routers, wireless systems, work stations, mobile devices, etc. from accidental or malicious attempts, which might threaten the security of the school systems and data. These are tested regularly. The school's infrastructure and individual devices are protected by up to date virus software.