Online Safety – Parent Tips
Help Keep Children Safe Online Presentation (PDF)
On 6 February, 2012 a Parents’ Information Evening was held in school on the subject of Cyberbullying and internet safety. It was a very cold, wet evening but many parents from Rushcliffe and other local schools braved the weather!
Lorna Naylor, Nottinghamshire Anti Bully Co-ordinator, gave us lots of information and tips for keeping ourselves and our children safe online. Her Powerpoint presentation and other resources are available now through the school web-site, We will be organising a similar event early in the Spring Term 2013.
Follow the link to the ‘Family Agreement’ on safe use of the internet. As a family it is important to have a common understanding of what is and what isn’t appropriate behaviour online. Childnet have provided a list of positive statements to help you make your family values known. It is important that emphasis is not simply placed on the child to make good or bad decisions –all family members should sign up to these values
The following is from Beatbullying who teamed up with the Nominet Trust and the NAHT to produce a report on cyberbullying in schools:
“28% of 11-to-16-year-olds have been deliberately targeted, threatened or humiliated by an individual or group through the use of mobile phones or the internet. This suggests that one-in-13 secondary-aged school children have experienced persistent and intentional cyberbullying.” However, The study also reveals a significant reduction in the percentage of children reporting cyberbullying from 33% in 2009 to 17% in 2011.”
“Although this is not conclusive evidence to show that the number of incidents of cyberbullying is decreasing, it may suggest that cyberbullying is becoming increasingly recognised as socially unacceptable.”
A Need To Reinforce Advice For Young People. The report suggests that a concern that young people are not following the suggested advice for responding to cyberbullying incidents and that work should be done to reinforce the correct guidance, including:
- Saving abusive messages, but not replying
- Copying and printing evidence
- Taking action to block the person sending the messages
- Contacting the service provider
“However, when children do seek help, it is interesting to note that friends and peers continue to be the network of support that they most commonly refer to: 23% told a friend or peer, whilst only 10% told a teacher or member of staff at their school, and 20% told a parent or another adult.”
Effective Responses to Cyberbullying for Young People. “The methods with the highest success rates in stopping the bullying were
- Pressing the report button and blocking the person who was sending the messages, at 67% and 63% respectively.
- Other proactive responses also return encouraging success rates in stopping the bullying – telling a peer mentor works in 57% of cases, and is as effective as telling a member of school staff.
- Telling a parent or other adult about the bullying was successful in 61%.
- Sending a rude or aggressive retaliatory message to the bully had a success rate of 61%. It could be that in cases where the initial bullying behaviour was not overtly intended as such – where it was perhaps more boredom-related, intended as a ‘joke’ or just to get a reaction – an angry response might shock or scare the person into backing down. However, although this method is reported as working to stop the bullying in certain cases, it is also a clear risk for escalating aggression and shows that more needs to be done in educating young people about positive online behaviour.”
Encouragingly, more respondents reported sending an assertive message back to the perpetrator telling them to leave them alone than responded with aggression; and reassuringly, this had a similar success rate (55%). In addition, the recommended step of saving the bullying message for evidence had almost the same success rate as deleting it, at 58% and 60% respectively.
Ignoring the behaviour only succeeded in stopping the cyberbullying 50% of the time. Where this method worked, it could be due to those bullies seeking attention being disappointed and giving up or moving on to another target due to the lack of a reaction.
Relatively few respondents reported changing their online details or reducing the time they spent online as responses to bullying; these are also the actions with the lowest success rates, at 49% and 43% respectively.”
Carol Gritti
Pupil Services Manager
