Our digital environment.
On the evening of Wednesday 13th February evening we welcomed e-Safe speaker Alison Strange to 
St Augustine’s Priory. Alison gave an informative talk to parents on e-safety. She raised awareness of some of the risks of the digital environment that children face today and offered practical advice and strategies for minimising these dangers.
New technology brings new risks such as radicalisation, cyberbullying, grooming and meeting strangers online. Children can spend excessive time on devices, and are vulnerable to sharing too much personal information with strangers and are at risks of other dangers such as scams.
Alison spoke about how the best resilience is a good parental/carer relationship. In order to achieve this, parents should stay engaged with their children, ask about what they like doing online and have regular conversations and ask open questions. Parents should also ask their children for help, and ask if they can show them how to do something better online. Agreeing reasonable ground rules around device use and screen time is important as well as ensuring children know where to go for help if they experience something upsetting. She also recommended that children should always keep their networking sites private and they should never accept requests from people they do not know.
Thank you to the parents who attended and asked important and helpful questions and to those who offered professional and personal stories related to online safety.
e-Safe is our chosen provider and they monitor the online activity which takes place on school equipment. e-Safe uses real people to review reports and keystrokes, not just an algorithm. Any queries are sent immediately and directly to the Headteacher, Mrs Raffray.
