Issue 1044: 10th May 2024 – 蜜桃传媒 School

HEADLINES

Online Safety

The Online Safety Act

As you may have seen in the news this week, Ofcom, the media regulator, has published draft codes of practice requiring technology firms to adopt more robust age-checking measures and to reformulate their algorithms to steer children away from what it is calling 鈥渢oxic material鈥�.

The Online Safety Act, which is not likely to take effect until the second half of 2025, will put the onus on social media firms and search engines to protect children from some legal-but-harmful material.

Platforms will also have to show they are committed to removing illegal content, including:

Child sexual abuse

Controlling or coercive behaviour

Extreme sexual violence

Promoting or facilitating suicide or self-harm

Animal cruelty

Selling illegal drugs or weapons

Terrorism

听

While we know that we cannot stop children from going online, the 蜜桃传媒 strongly recommends that parents and carers show an interest in what they are doing online and talk to them about how to stay safe.

If you are interested in knowing more, the 蜜桃传媒鈥檚鈥溾€� is a really helpful and useful document which also signposts a number of other resources for parents and children.

BBC Breakfast ran an excellent extended report about this subject on Wednesday morning which was extremely hard hitting and made for difficult but enlightening viewing.

If you didn鈥檛 get the opportunity to see it, I would urge you to watch it on catch up via the BBC iPlayer.

听

Sextortion

Sextortion has become a very significant issue in recent years, and it has increased in prevalence in the last twelve months.

Last week, all schools in the UK were sent an alert from the National Crime Agency regarding this issue, together with some information to share with parents, please click here to access the information.

Please do contact our pastoral or safeguarding teams if you are concerned or would like any further advice.

Smartphones

Internet Matters has published some excellent advice for parents/carers about staying on top of their children鈥檚 smartphone use, with practical things that you can do this weekend to make sure your child is safe online.

Please do take the time to read the following short article.

听

Coming Soon

Please make a note of some of the key events coming up over the course of the rest of this term:

14^th May	Year 12 Post-18 Pathways Meeting
4^th June	Year 8 Celebration Evening
11^th June	Year 9 Celebration Evening
12^th June	Year 12 UCAS Fair
2^nd July	Year 10 Awards Evening and Prefect Recognition听
4^th July	Year 11 Prom
9^th July	Year 7 Celebration Evening (a change from originally published date)
10^th -11^th July	Sixth Form Induction Event
11^th July	Year 13 Prom
16^th July	Summer Concert
19^th July	End of Term (school will finish at 12.30pm)

Further details for each event will be provider nearer the time.

听

Exams 鈥� Good Luck

Now that the GCSE examinations have started, I wanted to take the opportunity to wish all our Year 11 pupils and Year 13 students the very best of luck over the coming weeks.

We very much hope that all of their hard work will be justly rewarded.

听