Online Safety

Online safety is an important part of our safeguarding agenda at Penwortham Girls’ High School. As children across the country have spent more time online, the number of reported incidents relating to grooming has increased. It is important to monitor your daughter’s use of mobile devices and the internet to ensure that she is safe.

Below are some useful links and further information provided by the national agencies to help students, parents and carers understand the threats that children may be exposed to on-line, as well as ways of dealing with them.

We would encourage parents/carers to support their child by spending some time looking through the various links and discussing internet safety with your daughter.

As a school, we want to establish an online parent forum to consider how we can best support families with online safety.

If you are interested in joining this forum, please email s.hall@penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk.

What to do if you are a victim of cyberbullying?

The Governments advice for children includes:

Make sure you use the privacy settings.
Always respect others – be careful what you say online.
Be careful what pictures or videos you upload. Once a picture is shared online it cannot be taken back.
Only add people you know and trust to friends/followers lists online. When talking to strangers, keep your personal information safe and location hidden.
Treat your password like your toothbrush – keep it to yourself and change it regularly.
Block the bully – learn how to block or report someone who is behaving badly.
Do not retaliate or reply to offending e-mails, text messages or online conversations.
Save the evidence. Always keep a copy of offending e-mails, text messages or a screen grab of online conversations and pass to a parent, a carer or a teacher.
Make sure you tell an adult you trust, for example, a parent, a carer, a teacher, the anti-bullying co-ordinator or call a helpline like Childline on 08001111 in confidence.
Most social media services and other sites have a button that you can click on to report bullying. Doing this can prevent a bully from targeting you and others in the future. Many services take bullying seriously and will either warn the individual or eliminate his or her account.
While you are on your mobile phone, make sure you also pay attention to your surroundings.

Online Support

As a school, we are committed to listening to all our students and ensure that they feel supported on a daily basis to enable them to succeed and do their best.

We are aware there may be times however when students need additional help and support about things that are worrying them and need someone to talk to.

We have provided an email address and QR Code which allows students to voice any concerns that they may have about issues such as friendships, exam stress or well-being.

Students can send an email to safe@penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk

All emails will be sent to the pastoral team, they will be dealt with confidentially and will be acted on within school hours (8:30am to 3:30pm). This is not an emergency service and if a student needs urgent support, they can contact the organisations below:

• The Samaritans – Call 08457 909090 • Childline (up to 25 years) – Call 0800 1111 • Shout (24/7 Crisis text line for young people) – Text Shout to 85258 • Lancashire Mental Health Crisis Line – 0800 953 0110

For more information about online safety and cyberbullying, please visit the school website: https://www.penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk/parents3/online-safety/