Safety

Bullying

At Outwood Academy City we aim to provide a safe environment for your children, an environment where children know where to go and who to ask for when they require support and one where Bullying is dealt with effectively and efficiently.

Peer Mentors will be attending the Diana Award training for anti bullying. Please follow this link for further information.

E-Safety and Cyber Bullying

Introduction

• ICT is an everyday part of people’s lives and schools are making increasing use of new technology.
• At Outwood Academy City we have systems in place to protect your children.
• We recognise that we encourage students to go online for work out of school where there is less supervision and they have more freedom.

Golden rules to safe internet browsing

• 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.
• Children must always be accompanied by an adult if meeting an online friend in person.
• Don’t ban children from these sites; they will just use them at friend’s houses or on their phone, personal media player or hand-held 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’s 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 a quota of hours is up, unplug the ‘router’ where the phone line comes into the house.

What to look for on a website

• The CEOP report button is the online equivalent of dialling 999
• We need to train young people, just like we do with 999, to recognise it and know how to use it if they need to
• Look out for good websites that have the button built in
• Some websites refuse to add the button. Visit directly: www.ceop.police.uk

Online Bullying/Cyber Bullying

Cyber bullying is the use of the Internet and related technologies to harm other people, in a deliberate, repeated, and hostile manner.

• Children can be unkind to each other online. Bullying is not new but the technology has changed making it is easier to track and prove who is responsible
• 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 screen shots of web postings (ctrl + prnt scrn) we can investigate.

Find out more about understanding and stopping cyber bullying

Further information can be found at the following sites: CEOP, Childline, Think U Know and Kids Health.