Safeguarding for education settings

Online Safety

Keeping young people safe online can be a real challenge particularly as technology is moving at such a fast pace. A number of safeguarding concerns involve some form of the online world. The good news is we have lots of advice and support to help you keep young people and children safe online in your school or setting.

Online Safety – Where to start?

Embedding online safety into your curriculum in schools or organisations in a community is very important. We highly recommend you focus online safety around these 4 key areas:

• Keeping safe online – Where should we start and what should we be doing?
• Thinking critically – What questions should we be asking, and how can we better challenge what we see online?
• Digital resilience – How can we work through and best manage difficult situations online?
• Online wellbeing – How do we focus on our mental health, and at the same time protect our wellbeing when engaging with the online world?

Useful resources

A really good starting point for online safety resources is Project Evolve. The resource has guidance from early years to year 13. Also Childnet International has a great bank of resources for a number of age groups. 

We have also put together a list of great resources for primary and secondary schools. 

Primary Schools

All primary schools across the county have access to the community safety animations plus teacher guides, we recommend these resources are used with year 5 and 6 plus are embedded into your school’s curriculum. The themes included are: 

• Water and fire safety
• Knife crime and gangs
• Online safety
• Rail and road safety
• Hate crime
• Mental Health
• Personal Safety 

Secondary Schools – not an extensive list

We recommend secondary schools download and sign up to the following websites and use the highlighted resources as part of the PSHE and ICT curriculum

• CEOP talks relationships
• Respecting me, you us
• Send me a pic
• Ask the awkward – great for parents and carers
• Crossing the line – PSHE Toolkit 

Don’t forget for you can also check out our YouTube videos all around safeguarding children and young people online.

What polices or documents should our setting have in place?

The SWGFL have some great guidance around online safety polices.

Last updated 30 August 2023