E-safety – pupils speak

In an enlightening Pupil Voice session with some of our Y9 Esafety Ambassadors, as part of Safer Internet Day, the following points came to light:

• The pupils felt that there are too many negative associations with social media and whilst it was important to stay safe and to be educated about e-safety, pupils and parents alike should celebrate the great opportunities and benefits that social media can provide.
• Snapchat and Instagram remain the two most popular apps. Sarahah is also being used which the pupils were not fans of as this seems almost entirely set up to create and spread negative opinions about others.
• The pupils realised that “TootToot” was a valuable asset in terms of allowing pupils to speak to teachers whenever they had an internet-related issue to discuss.
• Their advice to parents/carers was to be ready to support your children when they need it and also to be vigilant in checking that privacy settings are correct but also to respect your child’s privacy in terms of their own content.

Thank you to our Y9 Esafety Ambassadors for sharing their thoughts and we hope that these opinions may be of some use to you as parents/carers.