Bangabandhu

Online Safety - Protecting Children 

At Bangabandhu online safety is an important part of our curriculum. We focus on teaching children how to stay safe online by helping them understand different challenges. We believe in being proactive rather than reactive.

The Teaching of Online Safety

Each half term, students from Reception to Year 6 take part in online safety lessons. These lessons cover age-appropriate themes, including:

Younger children and those with special educational needs discuss online experiences through social stories (written stories with pictures, to show certain situations, problems and challenges, and how children can deal with them.)

The lessons encourage sharing and discussion. Children learn from each other, give advice, and the teacher provides important information and strategies. Our main message is always to talk to a trusted adult about their online experiences and never to keep things to themselves.

We also celebrate Safer Internet Day each year, with activities based on a specific theme. An example theme was 'Online Scams: Too Good to Be True.' Younger children learned what personal information is safe to share, while older children explored online profiles, phishing scams, and categorised examples of online scams.

Parental Awareness of the Online World

We encourage parents and carers to be involved in their child's online world. We suggest playing games with them, talking about what they’re doing online, and understanding how they use devices. While we promote a screen-free childhood and don’t endorse smartphones, we know children use tablets, smartwatches, and other devices. Our goal is to educate. We want children to feel safe sharing their online experiences with you and to learn from any mistakes.

SmartPhone Free Childhood and Reduced Screen Time

At Bangabandhu, we have adopted a Healthy Minds policy where we advocate for no child of primary school age to be given a smartphone. We also advocate for reduced and limited time spent on screen for preschool and primary aged children. We believe that our commitment to these ideas support parents to reduce screen time at home and have the power to say no to giving their child a smartphone and removing it, if they have already done so. 

Please follow the link to this page where you will clearly see the harm smartphone use, the Internet and increased screen time is having on our children and young adults.  Smartphone Free Childhood page.

Safety Features - What you can do to protect your child

If you decide to allow your child to use Internet enabled devices it is extremely important that you set up safety features on these devices:

Useful Sites for Advice