Skip to content

Online Safety Information

 St John Fisher: Our Vision

At St John Fisher, we strive to create a school community where children and adults achieve their full potential and SHINE! We will achieve this through engagement, high expectations and by treating all with respect and dignity.

This page has a number of different websites that parents may find useful when looking for information, support and advice around their child and their online use and safety.

Parent Zone

Founded in 2005 and has a track record of providing information, support and advice to parents. In recent years, The Parent Zone’s work has focused on the impact of digital technologies on families. We provide information, resources and training for parents and those who work with them

Think You Know

Come in to find the latest information on the sites you like to visit, mobiles and new technology. Find out what’s good, what’s not and what you can do about it. If you look after young people there’s an area for you too – with resources you can use in the classroom or at home. 

When should I report to CEOP?

We help children stay safe online. Has someone acted inappropriately towards you online, or to a child or young person you know? It may be sexual chat, being asked to do something that makes you feel uncomfortable or someone being insistent on meeting up.

UK Safer Internet Centre

The 4 big internet providers in the UK – BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media – provide their customers with free parental controls which can be activated at any time. They have come together to produce these helpful video guides to help you to download and set-up the controls offered by your provider.

Comparitech - Parental guide to internet privacy

This guide is slightly different because it tackles the issue of online privacy which can span not only protecting children from online predators but also things like preventing identity theft (the FTC estimates that close to 3.5m children have had their SS number stolen for example) and ways to minimize the risks of the household computer becoming compromised.

Parent Info

This site has lots of information and advice for how best to support your children online.  It also provides you with an ‘essentials’ checklist for parents of children of any age, which highlights the actions you should take for your whole family. It then has suggestions for parents with children of different ages.

BT Website

The BT website answers 12 common questions about children and social media.

Online Safety Newsletters

Social Media

You can find some practical guidance for parents and carers whose children are using social media by clicking here.

Facebook is the most popular Social Networking site on the internet.  It was launched in 2004 and has an estimated 1.94 billion users.  You can find more information about how to protect yourself online, how to report issues and how to deactivate your account here.

Instagram is a photograph and video sharing application and is particularly popular with children and teenagers.  For further guidance of how you can stay safe when using Instagram, how to report any issues or how to deactivate your account click here.

Musical.ly allows users to create, share and discover new videos.  It allows users to create short videos of themselves dancing, performing or lip-syncing to music and to share them online via their app.  As with other social media sites users can set their profiles to private or public.  

Snapchat is a messenger app that allows you to send photos, videos, text and drawings.  The unique feature of Snapchat is that the message only stays on the recipient’s phone for a matter of seconds.  

Whatsapp is a free messenger app that enables users to send messages, images, video and audio using the internet and is popular amongst children.  Further information on how to restrict access to whatsapp can be found here.

Online Gaming

Online gaming has changed the gaming world for our children, they can now play against other gamers at any time.  This world can be scary for parents who don’t necessarily access these games themselves.  Practical advice for parents can be found here.

It is worth noting that games are subject to similar age ratings as films are.  The system for rating games is called the PEGI rating, we would encourage you to familiarise yourself with these ratings which can be found here.

Reporting

If you need to report something to a social networking site or a gaming provider you can find contact details of most of the popular social media and gaming providers by clicking here.

Want to speak to an expert?

 Childline and O2 have teamed up to offer a free helpline for parents for any queries you may have regarding online activity, this could just be simple queries about online gaming or parental controls.  The free phone number is 0808 800 5002.

Skip to content