At South Pennine Academies, we want every student to have the best possible chance to
achieve in school. Stronger partnerships with families, local businesses, community
agencies and universities are essential as we focus on improving student outcomes.
The internet is a fantastic place overflowing with knowledge, games and communities of people, and, just like pupils across the country, the pupils spend a great deal of time using the internet within Willowpark and at home.
We place a huge value on computing within our curriculum offer at our academy and encourage our children to experience different ways of accessing modern technology, learning new skills and creativity that will help them flourish both now and in the future. From interactive screens, devices, laptops to iPads, our children are able to access a wealth of hardware and software resources and explore different technologies to support and enhance their learning.
This is why it is important pupils learn how to be safe when browsing online and becoming members of online communities. The Online Safety of our children is of paramount importance to us and something that we monitor and revisit regularly.
We know that parents and carers will also be very concerned that their children are protected and safe when using the Internet, both in school and at home. We have added some documents below that contain useful information on how to keep your children safe, tips on how to initiate conversations around the subject of Online Safety and specific advice on online gaming. We have also included various links that will direct you to further information from external organisations.
As part of our work with National Online Safety, parents can access a range of workshops and tutorials to help you keep your child safe when online at home.
For Safer Internet day in school, children across all ages in our Academy have been thinking about what they, their parents, teachers, Government and Internet Tech firms can do to help make the Internet a 'Safer' place for us all to enjoy.
We made posters and created an Internet Safety Youth Charter, outlining our ideas. - see our Video below.
We also encourage parents to set up filtering on their home internet. To learn how to do this for the major providers of internet please click the text below.
In school, children learn about Online Safety through our wider curriculum work in PSHE and Computing and through assemblies. We also encourage parents/carers to talk to their children about how to behave safely when online, to ensure pupils remain safe when browsing at home.
Our children know to report any inappropriate content, contact or conduct they encounter online to CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) by visiting this page and clicking our report button below.
National Online Safety
We continue our commitment to Online Safety for our children, staff and families through our work and affiliation with National Online Safety. Through this partnership we have access to up to date information, latest advances in technology and high quality advice about the latest APPs and online attractions that our students might use or have access to. We also have training videos, advice and information that we open up for our parents to enable them to upskill themselves when supervising their children's activity online at home.
Through our dedication to this aspect of our work, which is threaded through our curriculum within computing, PSHE and is our embedded throughout our safeguarding, we are delighted to have achieved our accreditation for the last 4 years including 2023-24.