Priestlands School

With Christmas just around the corner, the holiday period is a great time to take stock of the devices they have (plus any new Christmas devices) and ensure they are set up correctly with any parental features you feel are appropriate for your child.
One frustrating issue is that the available features and how you set devices up differ, so to help parents Internet Matters have really good, non-techie guides which you can follow as part of their ABC Checklist. ABC stands for:

A - Activate parental controls

B - Balance screen time.

C - Check and chat.

You can find a full explanation, set up guides and excellent advice  HERE.

Cyber Security

Cyber security is fundamental to all of our lives -  from financial scams, identity theft, using public WiFi and much more. The excellent organisation, Internet Matters, have put together a number of articles and resources for parents and their children which go into these topics including:
 

• Creating secure accounts.
• Phishing and ransomware.
• Digital piracy,
• and much more.

You can find all the resources HERE.

When considering a private tutor for your child, safeguarding is crucial. Here are some key points for parents to keep in mind to keep your child safe, whether this is online or face to face.  

Remember, anyone can call themselves a tutor, so please click HERE and read this excellent advice from London Grid for Learning who always provide excellent safeguarding advice.

Hayley Yates

Designated Safeguarding Lead & Assistant Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers

Please find attached a letter from the National Crime Agency which schools have been asked to share with parents across the country. The letter is about a recent rise nationally in cases of a crime called ‘sextortion’

where young people are targeted and groomed to share images of themselves. These images are then used to blackmail young people for financial gain.

The letter contains clear advice of how to support your children. The best support you can give is to have a curious and open relationship with your child and their habits online. If you require further support, please do not hesitate to contact the school.

Hayley Yates
Designated Safeguarding Lead
Assistant Headteacher

As we navigate the digital landscape, it's essential to stay informed about the platforms our children use. Recently, there has been increased usage of Discord among young people.

What is Discord?

Discord is a platform that adults and children (over 13 years old) can engage with either public or private spaces. As the name suggests, the public servers (communities organised around a specific topic or group, often related to Roblox, Fortnight and Pokemon Go) are accessible to anyone, meaning whatever your child posts can be seen and engaged with by anyone else using the platform. These are likely to be people not known to them.

You can read more about it in the attached guide.

Internet Matters also publish these helpful resources.

For many young people with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), the internet can be a place where they feel safe, calm and in control. Somewhere they can make friends without having to communicate face-to-face, and build a community which they may not have in their offline life. Your child can have a great time online as long as they follow some simple safety rules.

For excellent online safety advice for children with SEND please see this advice from Internet Matters.

For many companies who operate online, attention and engagement are the ultimate goal. Social media sites in particular make deliberate creative choices to keep people scrolling, reading, watching and clicking. This phenomenon is known as ‘persuasive design’ and it’s employed in the vast majority of the digital world’s most popular apps. A study by the charity 5Rights Foundation concluded that “…the brain's response to rewards and punishments can be leveraged through persuasive design to keep children online.”

For hints and tips to avoid these manipulation tactics, please read the latest guide from the National Online Safety team which dissects the potential risks associated with persuasive design on our young people.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is used by more than half of 3 to 17-year-olds in the UK (including one in three from the 8-11 bracket), despite its 16+ age restriction and poses several dangers for secondary-aged children. One significant concern is the potential for contact with strangers and the ease in which strangers can initiate contact raises alarm bells. The app's popularity among young people makes it a breeding ground for unsolicited messages from unknown individuals, exposing young users to the risk of inappropriate content, harassment, or even predatory behaviour as well as fake news and convincing scams.

If your child hops onto WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends or family and you would like more information in how to support them in doing it safely then please see advice leaflet attached from National Online Safety.

Internet Matters also publish this helpful guide.

It’s no secret that online scams are incredibly common, and you might know someone who has personally been a victim of one. But it might be surprising to hear that scammers often consider children as “easy targets,” and try to extract personal or financial information that way. While teenagers these days are tech-savvy, they’re not immune to scams either.

Priestlands School has recently been alerted to a scam doing the rounds on TIK TOK, claiming the reward of free currency for online games in exchange for passwords and emails. Once they have that information, the cybercriminals are able to access funds from banks or credit cards; often resulting in huge losses for families. Please don’t think this won’t happen to your child; we have experience of it happening to our students.

For excellent advice on how to tackle online scams please visit Expert Q&A: How to tackle online scams | Internet Matters

Children seeking to keep things private is nothing new – but did you know that now, there’s an app for that?

Fake calculator apps, are apps on a device that look like one thing (e.g. a calculator) but are actually something else. They have been around for many years with the calculator app being the most popular as it looks like just an ordinary calculator but children are now using them to store personal, private information that could even have legal consequences if found.

For a good explanation visit Qustudio HERE.