At Poulton, we recognise that children are growing up in an increasingly complex world, living their lives seamlessly both on and offline from an ever-younger age. This presents exciting opportunities but also brings challenges and risks. Keeping Children Safe in Education (September 2025) identifies four key areas of online risk:

• Content: Exposure to illegal, inappropriate, or harmful material, including pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, anti-Semitism, radicalisation and extremism.
• Contact: Harmful online interactions with others, such as peer pressure, commercial advertising, or adults posing as children or young people to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes.
• Conduct: Online behaviour that increases the likelihood of harm, including creating, sending, or receiving explicit images (consensual or non-consensual), online bullying and sharing inappropriate content.
• Commerce: Risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and financial scams. Concerns can be reported to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (https://apwg.org/).

Poulton-le-Sands takes a proactive, whole-school approach to online safety, covering the four areas of risk outlined above. Our aims are to:

• Maintain an “it could happen here” mindset regarding safeguarding and online safety.
• Protect and educate children and staff in the safe use of technology, with clear mechanisms to identify, intervene and escalate concerns.
• Deliver a relevant, evolving online safety curriculum that equips pupils with the knowledge, skills and understanding to be safe, respectful and responsible digital users.
• Safeguard children from potential harm and inappropriate online material.
• Regularly audit our provision using resources from the UK Council for Internet Safety.
• Provide ongoing safeguarding training for staff to identify and support children at risk of online harms.
• Engage parents through frequent online safety posts/emails, Home-School Agreements, workshops and other initiatives.
• Maintain a high profile for online safety in our community through events such as Safer Internet Day and Anti-Bullying Week.
• Ensure a safe and monitored school network with robust filters in line with the UK Safer Internet Centre and the South West Grid for Learning.
• Ensure governors oversee our whole-school approach, including culture, funding, safeguarding arrangements, curriculum, network safety and incident management.

Our curriculum equips children with the skills and knowledge to make safe, responsible and considered use of the internet and technology, enabling them to benefit fully from the online world. More details can be found under Curriculum > Computing.

To view any of our policies, please see the ‘Policy’ page on the website. Alternatively, contact the office if you would like a paper copy.