Brightfilter

The government’s recently published Byron Review is an exhaustive report on the current state of child safety specific to video games and the Internet. The review highlights that many online “virtual” activities can have a detrimental effect on real life, such as bullying and racism; the data further identifies that exposure to inappropriate material online can promote harmful behaviour, and contribute to negative beliefs and attitudes.

The report advocates the creation of a UK Council on Child Internet Safety to look into ways of improving regulation, education and information, along with a focussed social marketing campaign to highlight the dangers. It also includes many recommendations for schools that will soon become mandatory, such as integrating e-safety into the school curriculum, an accredited filtering service, and calls for OFSTED inspections to hold schools to account for their policies on e-safety.

One way of preparing your school for these changes is to sign up to the Schools in Britain Internet Programme being launched by Brightfilter, an Internet Filtering company. The Schools in Britain Internet Programme helps schools ensure that they are both morally and legally compliant.

Those schools signing up to this free programme will receive the following key benefits:

• Schools will receive initial guidance and quarterly e-updates pertaining to government regulations and compliance, plus regular correspondence including programme updates and additional components.
• All families of school pupils will get a free subscription to the home user version of the filtering software (Brightfilter Parental Control), so that the same level of protection will be afforded to children at home as employed in their school.
• Discounted optional access to accredited, award-winning Internet filtering software.
• Schools following the guidance offered by the programme will ensure that they meet the OFSTED criteria.

I guess this end's up as a sales pitch to the parents, but with the free information available it may be worth considering.