The school bells are ringing to announce the start of the new school year.
It is a busy time for all school staff planning for the term ahead in terms of all aspects of teaching, learning and safeguarding. To help lighten the load we have created an online safety calendar for schools in the UK. It provides those professionals in school who look after online safeguarding and well-being of students and staff with a helpful snapshot of key e-safety dates month-by-month, as well as points of advice and support, including tools and resources available for your school to use. Among these key dates are Safer Internet Day 2019, Anti-Bullying Week as well as dates for our programme of free briefings around the country, which will bring you the latest online safety updates.
Some of the resources and tools we have featured include the online safety self-review tool 360 degree safe, now used by over 11,000 schools in the UK as well as our more recent tool 360 data which will help your school manage your data. We have also included further GDPR guidance for schools and colleges as well as our toolkit of online safety resources BOOST.
There are links to information about the bespoke e-safety training we offer to schools and, specifically around Christmas, you will useful links around using technology at home which you can share with parents and carers at your school.
Last but by no means least, please remember, we operate a helpline for school staff and other professionals working with children that can offer you advice, mediation and support with any online safety issues –not only those relating to the children you work with like gaming, sexting, bullying and so on, but also relating to online safety issues you as professionals may face like professional reputation, impersonation, social media mis-use and others.
