Online Safety

Headteacher
Chris Coyle-Chislett

Email the Office
secretary@penpol.cornwall.sch.uk

Telephone Number
01736 753472

Our Address
2 St George’s Road, Hayle,
Cornwall, TR27 4AH

Penpol Win the Treble!

Story shared by Nic Stanlake
on June 24, 2023

“Penpol pupils are curious, creative and courageous learners. Our school community believes in authenticity as the foundations of deep-rooted learning. Through our rich and relevant curriculum, we nurture community-minded, forward-facing international citizens of the future.”

At Penpol School we are aware that the internet plays an ever-growing role in all of our lives. From playing games to sharing content, keeping in touch with friends and video calling with family, the internet is all around us. Whilst the internet can be an incredibly powerful tool for learning, communication and entertainment we are also aware that it comes with dangers and risks.

At Penpol School we take Online Safety seriously and dedicate a large part of our Computing Curriculum to talking honestly about both the positive impact and also the dangers that come with internet usage.

Our Online Safety curriculum is based around Be Internet Legends from Google and Parent Zone. This scheme of work encourages open conversations, judgement-free questions and supportive suggestions to provide our students with the information they need to stay safe online. This curriculum is available free of charge to parents and can be viewed on the Parent Zone website here if you’d like to carry on these conversations at home.

Be Internet Legends

Parent Zone also offer a wide range of advice and support for parents and families to ensure our children are able to stay safe wherever they use the internet. One of the biggest barriers to supporting children at home can be the rapid pace of change with internet technologies. New apps, games and websites pop up every month and each can bring challenges.

Parent Zone have created a good library of information about all the popular online services that children use – empowering you to have open and honest conversations with your own children about their online safety.

At Penpol School we firmly believe a key element in staying safe online is encouraging open lines of communication between children and their trusted adults. Creating a culture of open discussion and being able to ask judgement-free questions is important as it encourages children to share worries that may crop up through internet usage, rather than keeping these worries to themselves. This then empowers us adults to support and help with these concerns. There are lots of ways to foster this culture both at home and at school, but they all start in the same way – by talking to our children. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre have created a helpful checklist of tips to keep your children safe online and to encourage discussions with them.

CEOP: Keeping Your Child Safe Online Checklist

Keeping Your Child Safe Online – A Checklist for Parents and Carers from CEOP

As a school we are here to help. We share monthly Online Safety Newsletters as well as running Parent Workshops around Online Safety. Furthermore, we are always available to talk and support if you’d like some advice for a situation you’re currently experiencing. For any safeguarding concerns you can email Mr Chislett here and for technical support you can email Mr Woolcock and Paul here.

Online Safety Newsletter

Finally, it’s worth remembering there are tools built in to our devices to help manage internet usage safely. Both Android and iOS contain really helpful features (Family Link and Screen Time respectively) to help monitor and guide children using devices at home.

There are guides to how both of these work available on the buttons to the right.