Cyber Safety

CYBER SAFETY

CYBER SAFETY

Peninsula Grammar takes instances of bullying very seriously and has a number of policies in place to manage various types including cyber-bullying. The School is actively working to reduce the instances of cyber-bullying and to educate families.

CYBER SAFETY POLICY


The School continues to liaise with other school communities, and with individuals and organisations, who provide ongoing support and education to develop a culture of cyber safety.

Cyber-bullying can include acts such as posting or texting mean comments, making threats, sending insults or racial or ethnic slurs, and masquerading. Victims can delete or block the perpetrator, limit computer connection time, not respond to threatening or defamatory messages, never opening email messages from sources they do not recognise and report the bullying to the School.

If the abuse occurs outside of school hours, and off the school network, the School will speak to the student involved in the abuse and make contact with the parents. Evidence such as print outs or emails of the abuse or offensive comments or images are helpful to the discussion. When necessary, the School will protect students by attributing the finding of the material to an anonymous student or parent. In our experience, this is often enough to stop the activity immediately. The School may also suggest strategies such as, ‘blocking’ or ‘deleting’ the offender, changing their password, resetting their privacy settings, changing their mobile phone number and so on.

If the abuse occurs at school and/or on the School network, the School will disable the child’s account and an appropriate disciplinary consequence will be applied. Parents of the child will be informed and the child counselled on the expectations of the School’s Internet Use Policy. If cyber-bullying continued the School may encourage contact with the Police.

Peninsula Grammar conducts regular awareness programs with students to ensure their welfare and safety in an ICT learning environment.

The following online resources may also be useful: