Edgbaston School gains national recognition for e-safety

27 March 2015 - With children and young people spending more time online there's an increased risk of them seeing content that's inappropriate or subject to cyberbullying but an Edgbaston school has received nation recognition for keeping children and adults safe online.

Chad Vale Primary School has achieved the 360° E-safety award this week, a nationally recognised standard of excellence in keeping children and adults safe online. Chad Vale is the first primary school in Birmingham to gain this award and the children, staff, parents and governors are very proud!

Paul Sansom, head teacher at Chad Vale School, said: "E-safety is an issue which is paramount in the lives of us all, but particularly for school age children. They live their lives surrounded by technology and are already far more internet-savvy than most of their parents. Educating about E-safety is vital for us at Chad Vale and we have led the way in Birmingham in providing this for our children and families."

The 360° Safe audit framework allowed the school to identify our strengths and areas for development at the beginning of the process, two years ago. It also gave practical suggestions for action and to fully embed online safety throughout the school's policies, procedures and curriculum. As the final assessment report states: "At Chad Vale Primary School both the policy and leadership for e-safety are excellent."

A dedicated E-safety page on the school website has been created and contains many useful links to helpful websites, with downloadable content for parents to be able to ensure E-safety within the home environment. The school twitter feed (@chadvaleprimary) which is nearing our 10,000th tweet is also used to model excellent practice, share resources and ideas.

Kerry Grosvenor, ICT Leader at Chad Vale School, added: "Our E-safety group of children in Year 5 and 6 act as role models to the younger children ensuring online safety is discussed and monitored on a regular basis. This is vital in handing responsibility to the older children in the school and helping them to develop their leadership skills when training the younger children, teachers and parents. The assessment report confirms our ‘real sense of team responsibility for e-safety and a very positive, safe environment for the children'".

In the future, the school plans to share its successes with the wider community helping and supporting other schools to develop their use of technology and online safety. To get in touch, please email enquiry@chadvale.bham.sch.uk or call 0121 464 7329.

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Picture Caption (l to r): Chad Vale Pupils: Maariyah, Gurveer, Rohan, Arya, Harsimran, Natasha, Ardita, Jaskarn, Thea and Kaan (kneeling).