Online Safety

ICT and technology is part of all our lives and whilst this brings great benefits, there are online dangers. Trinity Academy Grammar urges all parents and carers to check the security settings on home devices and monitor internet use to help protect your child online.

E-safety and Cyber Bullying

Below are some practical tips to support online safety:

• Children should ideally only add on social media sites people they know and trust in real life.
• Some predatory paedophiles can convincingly pose as another teenager and may spend months or years ‘grooming’ the victim until they meet face to face. Young people must always be accompanied by an adult if meeting an online friend in person.
• Do not ban children from these sites; they will just use them at friends’ houses or on their phone, personal media player or handheld games console.
• Take an interest and suggest they add you as a friend so you can keep an eye on them when they first join.
• Have the main computer in a communal area of the home where there is passive supervision and be reasonable about time online. Talk if you feel it is getting out of hand (but remember how many hours you spent watching TV when you were their age – the Internet is at least active, not passive and they can learn a lot from it).
• If they have a wireless laptop and you want to stop them going online after their allocated time is up, unplug the router where the phone line comes into the house.
• If you suspect your child is having a problem, the evidence will be on your computer. If you can print off copies of messages and screenshots of web postings, these will be used to investigate further.

If you have any concerns your child is a victim, or a potential perpetrator, of cyber bullying contact a member of our pastoral team.

CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre)

Below is the CEOP button. This reporting button is the online equivalent of dialling 999. We educate our students to recognise it and use it, when needed. For more information, visit the CEOP channel on YouTube.