Safeguarding & online safety

Technology plays a key role in preparing our children for life beyond school. As pupils' understanding and experience of online material grows, it’s important that our understanding grows alongside theirs so that we all have the knowledge necessary to ensure their experience is positive, safe, and empowering.

We prioritize the online safety of every child and ensure the integrity of the school's systems.

Monitoring & Filtering

We utilise several important technological layers working in combination to provide robust protection:

• Boundary Protection and Content Filtering: Our internet network is protected by an industrial-grade firewall and content filtering solution. This system meets the standards set out in Keeping Children Safe in Education, acting as a digital barrier, preventing unauthorised access, managing network traffic, and blocking websites that contain harmful or inappropriate content from reaching our school devices.
• Device Protection (Anti-Virus): All school equipment has centrally managed Antivirus and Endpoint Protection suite installed. This security software constantly monitors for and immediately removes malicious threats, such as viruses or malware, ensuring the hardware and pupil data remain secure.
• Active Monitoring and Safeguarding: Beyond blocking access, we actively monitor pupil activity across the network. Alerting designated safeguarding leads to potentially harmful actions that may indicate a child is at risk or being targeted.
• Communication Platform Security (Google): Our email platform and Learning Management System (LMS) are provided by Google. This service includes powerful, built-in security protocols that filter out spam, phishing attempts, and suspicious emails before they reach inboxes, safeguarding our digital communications.
• Data Integrity and Recovery: All of our critical school data is protected by a comprehensive backup and data recovery solution. This essential system is managed by our trusted IT support partner, TechResponse, ensuring that all information is regularly saved and can be quickly and securely restored in the event of hardware failure or accidental data loss.

E-Safety

We recognise that internet, mobile and digital technologies provide a good opportunity for children and young people to learn, socialise and play, provided they are safe.

The digital world is vast and fast moving and young people’s future economic success may be partly dependent on their online skills and reputation. We are, therefore, committed to ensuring that all pupils, staff and local governors are able to use internet, mobile and digital technologies safely. This is part of our safeguarding responsibility.

Staff are aware that some pupils may require additional support or teaching, including reminders, prompts and further explanation to reinforce their knowledge and understanding of online safety issues. We are also committed to ensuring that all those who work with children and young people, including their parents/carers, are informed about the ever-changing risks so that they can take an active part in the safeguarding of our children.

Child Exploitation and Online Protection

The National Crime Agency's Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) helps children and young people. CEOP offers help if a young person (up to 18) has been forced or tricked into taking part in sexual activity with anyone online or in the real world. CEOP also offer advice and resources to support with the online problems young people might face, such as cyberbullying and hacking.

On the homepage of this website you'll see a scared character, which is an easy-to-access link to CEOP for our pupils. At Halley House School we teach children that if they are worried about online safety, they can click on the scared figurine and the link will take them straight to CEOP for support.

National College 

The National College provides multi-award winning online safety education for the whole school community. They believe that when children go online to learn, to communicate or to play, they should be able to do so safely. 

We are delighted to offer National Online Safety courses for free to all our families. The courses are up-to-date and relevant for all our young people, and for their families, as we work to keep them safe online. 

Parents can join National College for free to help children to use the internet safely. You can register and create your account. When you’re set up, you’ll be able to set ‘Parent/Carer’ as your user type.

Childline

Childline offers a website aimed at children under the age of 12.

This provides age-appropriate support and advice on topics like bullying, family, friends, feelings, school, abuse and staying safe in the community and online.

Childline also offer activities with fun things to make and do – make art, play games and watch videos – which reinforce positive messages.

E-safety policy

See our key safeguarding policies on our Policy page; if you would like paper copies of these, simply ask our staff at the office. Do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or queries about the information contained in any of these documents.