Ensure Students’ Online Safety at Schools

Online Safety is equally important at home and outside home, especially at school where a kid spends most of his/her day. A parent can always supervise a child’s online activity at home on a day-to-day basis. There are several tools available in the market today to enforce rules on a child’s online activities at home. But is the child safe online at school?

Statistically, kids are safer online at school than at home. The students are usually better supervised at school by teachers, librarians and media specialists. Also, most schools, if not all, use monitoring technologies to oversee the students’ online activities.  Many schools block instant messaging and chat as this is the predominant medium for cyber predators.  

However, as a parent, you are responsible to make sure your child’s school has policies in place to enforce online safety. There are several questions you can ask the school, some of which are,

1. Does the school communicate the rules to students and parents and the consequences of violating them?
2. Does the school protect all student’s personal information on their website?
3. What kind of web content filtering does the school provide?
4. What if students cyberbully others?

A team effort of parents, teachers, librarians, safety officers and school officials can make progress in ensuring that students’ online experience is as safe as possible.