Online Safety

Dear Parents/Carers,

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support during the reopening of the school this term.  We have loved seeing your wonderful children return to school and it has been a pleasure and a privilege to work alongside them. 

On the whole, we have enjoyed a very positive start to the term, but I wanted to bring to your attention a concern that staff and parents have brought to me. 

We have a number of children across the whole school who have access to many on-line social media platforms, games and apps at home and I would like to remind you all of the strict age limits on these. 

*Please see the attached document for further details. 

The attachment does not include tiktok, but I would like to remind you that this has an age limit of 13.

As a mum myself, I would appeal to all of you to monitor your child’s usage and access to these at home and ensure the content is appropriate.  If they are chatting or texting their friends at home then please ensure that the content is friendly and kind. 

I understand it is almost impossible to shield older children from news and the media, but you can show them the control they have in managing what they see and how they react.  These are some tips we would suggest you use at home if they do come across something upsetting:

• Older children may be particularly skilled in finding information quickly, talking to them about how upsetting content can spread quickly will help them understand how viral content works
• Talk about the importance of being sensitive online, and not sharing any upsetting content for others to see
• Talk about what your child could do if he/she needed support for their mental health

As part of DCF (Digital Competence Framework) of the new curriculum for Wales, we have been focussing on the ‘Citizenship’ strand this term and we have carried out many sessions with the children on ‘Health and Well-being’, ‘Digital Rights’ and ‘Online behaviour and cyberbullying’.  These have been further promoted with sessions by P.C Underhill and will continue this term with some additional sessions booked in over the next few weeks. We would really appreciate it if you could support this vital message at home.

Please follow the link below for further guidance and support on HWB:

https://hwb.gov.wales/zones/keeping-safe-online/parents-and-carers/

Our ‘Promoting Positive Behaviour’ policy can also be found on our school website for your reference:

https://primarysite-prod-sorted.s3.amazonaws.com/ynystawe-primary-school/UploadedDocument/e0753fe6c93b4cc7ad6bc7cb2c44a03b/promoting-positive-behaviour-policy.pdf

Thank you for your continued support and taking the time to read this letter.  It is very important that we ensure all of our children stay safe on-line.

Best wishes,

Sarah Williams

Education Is Changing

Please follow the link here to take you to the Education Is Changing website.

The biggest change is a new curriculum for schools in Wales from September 2022. It will affect all schools other than Independent schools. The curriculum has been made in Wales but shaped by the best ideas from around the world.

There will also be changes to improve how we assess pupils, teacher training and school accountability. These improvements will complement the new curriculum.

for more information please click here

There is a short video to give the changes in brief, to view please click here

Important Online Safety 

This information has been provided by https://nationalonlinesafety.com/ 

Please click here: https://mobile.twitter.com/natonlinesafety/status/1100453894814158848/photo/1

GDPR  - Privacy Notice

Ynystawe Primary School is the data controller who is responsible for holding the data you provide. We will use your data to keep you up to date with school activities such as concerts, fundraising and sports days. We will not share your data with anyone else and we hold your information on the basis of your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by contacting the school office. More information on your rights can be found in our privacy notice and our Data Protection policy.

Online Safety for Parents and Carers

It is often challenging to keep up with your children's use of technology; what they are doing online, who they are chatting to, what games they are playing and what they are downloading and viewing. For more information and guidance please follow this link, here.

Ynystawe children have been working on a project who's aim was to promote creativity and develop high order thinking skills that will be transferrable across the learning landscape.

to read more please click here