A school committed to every child’s wellbeing and safety
At Oakwood Community School, we take our Safeguarding role extremely seriously; striving to provide the strongest possible support for all our students. Our formal Safeguarding & Child Protection policy is below, and we would ask any parent or carer to speak to us if they have any concerns over a child’s mental or physical wellbeing – no matter how small those concerns may appear.
“Staff apply a consistent, nurture-based approach to the support they provide each pupil. As a result, pupils are able to manage their behaviour and engage with learning.”
OFSTED 2023
Our Safeguarding Policy can be accessed below:
A committed Safeguarding Team
Sam Bruce
Richard Hardy
Our aim is to be as transparent as possible, sharing safeguarding concerns with relevant personnel and ensuring we are providing a ‘safe’ environment for students and staff alike.
Throughout the academic year, our safeguarding team plan to deliver a range of discussion areas to students through assemblies, guest speakers and tutor group activities to develop their own understanding of keeping safe and supporting each other during difficult times. This includes topics such as CSE, online grooming, e-safety, anti-bullying, anxiety, exams, respect, prevention and more.
Should you, as a parent/carer or student, have any safeguarding concerns that you wish to share with the school please follow our contacts link below to direct to the right member of our Safeguarding team.
Contact can be made through our main school telephone number 01455 273 763
From time to time, we will release useful and relevant safeguarding notices to parents/carers – copies of these notices will be posted within the link below for your ongoing reference.
Online Safety
Children at Oakwood Community School use the Internet on a regular basis as part of their learning. In school, we teach ‘e-safety’ through the Computer Science curriculum to remind children of the importance of keeping themselves safe online.
At home, sometimes children can be given unsupervised access to the Internet. This, potentially, allows them to access all kinds of society (both good and bad) and bring them virtually into their homes.
Here are some tips and useful links to help you to keep your children safe online:
Social media platforms
Each social media platform has its own set of rules and settings that can help to keep a child safe. We have listed them here for your information, along with some tips for helping a child to use the various portals safely.
Minimum age: 13
Facebook’s privacy settings let your child control who sees their posts and timeline.
Click or tap the padlock icon at the top of any page and this takes you to Privacy Shortcuts in the drop-down menu for further instructions. On the mobile app you will find it under More at the bottom of the screen.
Your child can also block someone (click or tap the padlock icon on the right side of their timeline, then select How do I stop someone from bothering me and type in their user name), and report abusive or offensive content (choose Report post after clicking the arrow to the right of the name of the person, or Report group by clicking on the three dots to the right of Notifications at the top). On mobiles and tablets, go to Privacy Shortcuts (see above) and then click on How do I stop someone from bothering me.
Minimum age: 13
To set Instagram posts to private, your child should go to their profile by tapping the person icon. Then, tap the gear icon (iOS) or the three dots icon (Android) and turn on the Private Account setting.
Your child can also block and remove followers by tapping their username, then the three dots icon and selecting Block User.
Snapchat
Minimum age: 13
Snapchat has two privacy settings, one for who can send your child Snaps and another for who can view their Stories. To change these privacy settings, tap the gear icon in the top right of the Profile screen to access Settings. To change Who Can Send Me Snaps within Settings, tap Send Me Snaps and choose from Everyone or My Friends. To change Who Can View My Stories within Settings, tap View My Story and select either Everyone, My Friends or Custom. Any changes will be saved when you press the back button.
To block someone, go to My Friends, tap on the name of the person you want to block, then the gear icon, which brings up a list of options. Click Block.
Minimum age: no specific T&C but in their privacy policy they say that their services are not directed to people under 13.
Your child can choose to protect their tweets, so they are only visible to the Twitter followers they have approved. On the Web, find Settings under your small profile pic, top right.
Go to Security Privacy settings, scroll down to the Tweet privacy section, tick the box next to Protect my Tweets and click the blue Save button. On a smartphone, go to Me, tap on the gear icon (iOS) or overflow icon (Android), select Settings and choose the account you’d like to edit. Then, for iOS devices, go to Protect my tweets and tap On and for Android devices, go to Other and tick the Tweet privacy box.
To block someone on the website and mobile, click on their tweet, select the three dots icon, then click Block. You can also Report a user or comment here.
YouTube
Minimum age: 13 for an account, no minimum to watch videos
YouTube is very popular with children of all ages. You can watch videos without creating an account or (over 13s only) log in with a Google account to upload videos, comment and vote.
If you’re worried about your child watching inappropriate content on YouTube, you can set up Restricted Mode. From your computer or tablet, click on the drop-down menu at the bottom of any page on YouTube and select ‘On’. To prevent your child from making changes, lock Restricted Mode for that particular browser – you’ll need a YouTube account to do this.
To access Restricted Mode on mobile, you’ll need to go to the Menu and look under Settings.
YouTube also allows you to flag, report and block videos, comments and accounts. To block or report a user, go to their channel, click About, click the flag icon and choose from the drop-down menu.
To report a video, click on More and select Report.
To report a comment on a video, hover over the comment, click the arrow in the top right corner and use the Report spam or abuse link.
TikTok
Minimum age: 13
TikTok allows users to create their own videos or watch content created by others. Content may show pets, arts, comedy, sports, dance, food, travel, music and games. Users can the content they like to see other similar footage.
Users can participate in hashtag challenges via the ‘Discover’ button; new challenges are added every week.
Users are able to share their videos on other social media platforms, i.e., Instagram, Facebook and can build up a following/reputation.
TikTok now has privacy options, that include the ability to make the account private (recommended); allowing you to choose who can comment on or download your videos – you can also limit who can duet with you. Users can now also block other users. Messaging has always been private and can only be sent between ‘friends’.
Privacy settings can be found on the top right of the TikTok screen (three dots) within ‘Privacy and Settings’.