Online safety is also integral to the safeguarding and protection of all the school community members and requires a whole school, cross-curricular approach. This means that collaboration between members of staff, children, management, parents, governors and the wider school community is essential to achieve this holistic approach. Accordingly, the schools approach to this is in line with ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ 2022 (KCSIE) and other statutory documents. The school’s commitment is to complement existing statutory teaching requirements to build a broader and more thorough plan of education in relation to online safety for all at St Christopher’s. This links in with the planned curriculum of Health, Relationships and Sex Education, Citizenship and Computing and builds from these starting points to embed online safety as a constant and consistent theme of the pedagogy delivered to all ages. The safeguarding and related child protection policies within the school are also tied to this principle that all of us share responsibility for delivering an online safety message. This is delivered and upheld by all that are connected with it.
The school aims to achieve this by delivering specific learning content through the PSHE, and Computing curricula, and through persistent and deliberate iteration of online safety as a theme throughout learning in the classroom and beyond. This will follow the four key principles of Content, Contact, Conduct and Commerce as outlined in KCSIE 2022. Staff will be regularly updated with latest developments in this field and the school aims to build dialogue with parents to keep them informed in the same way through bulletins, newsletter updates and specific, targeted information events.
The school recognises that no one system will provide complete protection against the evolving and shifting nature of the online world, but aims to provide the best level of protection, understanding and knowledge for all those that are part of the school community. This is to help protect the children at the core of our provision. To that end, the school undertakes to review the relevant policies and procedures as part of a rolling program of maintenance, but also at specific reviews of systems and provision, and in relation to any occurring events or updates as they should arise
