E-Safety
What is e-safety?
E-safety is a term which includes not only the internet, but also other methods that people use to communicate with electronic media, e.g. mobile phones. It means ensuring that staff and children are protected from harm and supported to achieve the maximum benefit from the new and developing technologies whilst minimising risk to themselves or others.
The aim of promoting e-safety is to protect staff and children from the adverse consequences of access to or use of electronic media, including from bullying, inappropriate behaviour or exploitation.
CEOP help keep children and young people safe online; they are there to help when online situations have made you feel unsafe, scared or worried.
All you need to do is tell them what has happened. Your report will be read by a Child Protection Advisor. The Child Protection team are specialist workers who have helped thousands of children. They will immediately start thinking about how they will help you.
They then work together with lots of other professionals which includes other police agencies. If a crime has been committed they use their specialist skills to identify the person or people responsible and bring them into the criminal justice system.
Useful Websites
Kara and the SMART Crew - Info for Children
Internet Provider Information
WBC IT Statement (October 2023)
WBC ICT Information
Inappropriate access to information via the internet is clearly a large area of concern for schools, and the September revision of the DfE guidance shows that the issue is large enough to have controls audited by Ofsted.
Below is a small example of the categories of sites we are blocking for you:
- Child Abuse
- Discrimination
- Drug Abuse
- Explicit Violence
- Extremist Groups
- Hacking
- Illegal or Unethical
- Plagiarism
- Pornography
As the local authority’s ICT team look after web filtering for your school, we will investigate any web filtering related issues, including:
- Access to website containing inappropriate or potentially harmful material
- Access to websites containing educational or related material deemed appropriate for your school
- Providing web access reports on an annual basis
We also ensure that the service is maintained and is accessible for schools to use.
As we provide the filtering service to schools, we are ensuring that all relevant safeguards and statements of assurance are being completed so that schools taking our service can be assured that the web filtering service provided is meeting the guidelines published thus far.
As part of the ongoing duty of care that the Local Authority has in relation to Schools, we have to ensure that you are taking all necessary precautions to ensure the service you are receiving is appropriate.
The UK Safer Internet Centre have drawn up some provider response checklists which we are working with our supplier to ensure are completed.
The UK Safer Internet Centre provider checklists can be found here:
From the work done with our supplier, we are confident that the current web filtering service meets and exceeds the Ofsted guidelines.
The solution is fully resilient and is constantly updated via national feeds from the wider internet community to ensure that as new websites are created they are categorised and sanctioned accordingly.
The Network SLA that your school has signed up to includes several elements of which filtering forms a part. Above the web filtering aspect of the service, WBC ICT also provide the following features which are all currently active for your school:
Antivirus - This prevents viruses which are hosted on websites from automatically infecting your endpoints. This does not however protect you if you actively click on a download link.
Application control - This stops some applications running which utilise peer to peer (file-sharing) features.
Intrusion Prevention - This element actively works to stop hackers from gaining access to your endpoints.
Website Certificate Inspection - This feature checks websites to ensure any certificates they have are valid and up to date, this stops users ending up on some malicious websites or websites that are not being maintained appropriately.