ROUNDTABLE: PRIMARY AND SECONDARY
“While it’s clear that UK schools are heading in the right direction, their attempts only matter if parents are willing to try too”
they enjoy doing online to ensure that any policies implemented complement and safeguard these activities. This way, educators and students alike can reach a
mutual understanding of the online dangers affecting us all today – aſter all, internet safety is something we need to work towards achieving together. The current internet generation has already indicated they wish to become more private and share less in their rapid adoption of apps that are purely image-based or that restrict access to content by time. When engaging with a student council on policy, the faculty staff may well find that the students could be well placed to become the educators on some elements of safety online.
How can schools educate and support parents with online safety?
Carmel Glassbrook: There are a multitude of activities and functions a school can engage in, but also that this is an ever-changing and dynamic area of work. This should not be a one-off engagement with parents! Unfortunately the most common calls we receive on the POSH Helpline are from schools about the online abuse of staff, abuse usually coming from a parent at the school. We have seen countless cases of parents taking to social media to air their grievances with the school or its staff. Whilst this can obviously be very distressing for the teachers, it can also pose reputational risk for the school as a whole. Parents try to be good role models in every aspect of life, and online should be no different. In this situation we advise asking parents to come in to the school to talk about the issues they are having face to face, we find when they feel they are being listened to they are generally willing to remove their comments, especially when they realise the impact that their behaviour could have on their child. Incorporating online safety as part of the routine dialogue between schools and parents would seem to be most prudent.
Will Gardner: Schools provide a hugely important role in helping parents to get to grips with their child’s digital lives. Schools could send parents advice and reminders, run a parent session, invite them in to your school’s Safer Internet Day activities, or why not encourage pupils to host a drop-in social media advice clinic for parents? It’s a challenging area for parents and carers, but the most important thing they can do is have an open dialogue with their children. Schools can play an important role in providing the spark to ignite these conversations.
Mhairi Hill: Again, pupil voice is a powerful tool here. We ran a pupil-led e-safety workshop for parents where pupils presented on privacy and protection features of the most popular social network platforms. Feedback indicated that parents valued hearing the thoughts of the young people. Using online tools for communication such as an
e-safety section of the school website, an official school Facebook and/or Twitter page enables parents to keep up to date with e-safety issues. The inclusion of e-safety in school newsletters also helps to raise awareness. Pastorally, where a young person has been directly involved in an online incident we would invite the
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parents in for support and guidance on ways in which they can support their child. For example, parents can bring in their devices for assistance in setting parental controls appropriate for the age and stage of their child.
Tony Anscombe: Children spend a large amount of time at school, so naturally teachers have a big role to play when it comes to supporting and educating parents on online safety best practices – communicating a consistent message to children (whether at home or in the classroom) on the topic is key. Just as teachers have to, parents must take responsibility to continue their own online education – and schools can help accommodate this. However, our own research revealed that only a
third (33%) of teachers said their school had arranged events to educate parents about online safety, 40% of which were ‘unsatisfied’ with the parent turn out for the session. While it’s clear that UK schools are heading in the
right direction, their attempts only matter if parents are willing to try too. Teachers need to encourage parents to seek involvement by stressing the importance of such events and sharing relevant resources and top tips to help aid their education in this area. It’s important that parents are not complacent in this and rely only on the education system and government to provide this generation with the guidance they need to be the safe digital citizens of the future. Only by working together will this issue truly be tackled successfully.
Steve Baines: Ensure that the parents are actively involved in this area. If the school does, as suggested above, ask pupils
for their thoughts on what online safety is, why it is important, what are the dangers etc from their perspectives, share this with the parents in an anonymised form so that parents can see for themselves how the children feel about this. Ask the parents the same questions and see how the
answers align or differ from those provided by pupils or staff. Share the differing perspectives and suggest policies that address as many concerns as possible in a way that also allows all parties the confidence that technology will be used in school in a confident, reliable way with appropriate safeguards in place. Make sure the parents are aware of the staff training
that the school puts in place and in the best case scenario, offer online safety training sessions to parents as well.
Mike Beverley: We’re in the early stages of this journey with parents of our pupils. As a school, we think we are responsible for helping the parents, but it’s an issue that attracts many opinions, especially from staff.
Daley Robinson: From a technology perspective, investment in a solid infrastructure and the right management services for any BYOD or one-on-one device schemes is the best way of supporting parents’ efforts to educate their kids about online safety. With a decent infrastructure and strong policies to support it, parents have a very good baseline from which to reassure their kids, and themselves about e-safety within the school environment. ET
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