Video · Teachers Media
“Teaching E-safety”
E-safety — the practice of teaching pupils to stay safe online — has evolved from a peripheral IT-lesson topic to a whole-school responsibility woven through PSHE, safeguarding, computing, and pastoral work. The genre of "assemblies about stranger danger online" is largely gone; something more sophisticated has taken its place.
About this video
The KCSIE (Keeping Children Safe in Education) statutory guidance now requires all schools to have an online-safety policy and to teach it through the curriculum. The DfE's "Teaching Online Safety in Schools" guidance sets out five core areas: how to evaluate what pupils see online; how to recognise techniques of persuasion; positive online behaviour; how to identify online risks; and how and when to seek support. Well-designed provision covers all five progressively across the phases.
The most effective e-safety teaching tends to move beyond one-off assemblies and posters. It's embedded — in the way pupils are taught to search and evaluate sources in humanities, the way they discuss online conflict in PSHE, the way they think about digital identity in ICT. It's also age-appropriate. What KS1 pupils need to know about online safety is very different from what Year 10 pupils need to know, and lumping them together — as generic e-safety assemblies often do — helps no one.
The other consistent finding is that pupils listen better when the message doesn't sound alien. Adults who visibly understand the platforms and don't treat all online life as dangerous have more credibility than those who preach from outside. That doesn't mean pretending to be a peer — it means engaging honestly with the actual online lives pupils have.
What good e-safety provision looks like
- Curriculum-embedded, not just assemblies. Woven into PSHE, computing, English, humanities — wherever it naturally sits.
- Age-appropriate. KS1 messages about not sharing personal details are different from KS4 messages about consent and image sharing.
- Credible messengers. Adults who understand the actual platforms and speak to pupils' real online lives.
- Positive as well as protective. How to build a good online life, not just how to avoid a bad one.
- Clear routes to support. Pupils know exactly who to tell if something goes wrong, and trust that they'll be listened to.
Discussion prompts
- How does your school's e-safety provision reach pupils who have already had a bad online experience? Is the support genuinely accessible?
- When you teach e-safety, do you sound like you understand the platforms — or like someone reading from a decade-old script?
- What proportion of your e-safety teaching is about protection from bad things versus building of good digital habits?
Try this in your classroom
- Audit one term of your e-safety provision. What did pupils actually encounter? What proportion was age-appropriate and current?
- Ask a small group of pupils to tell you what they wish adults understood about being online right now. Listen without correcting.
- Include a specific, credible signpost to support (Childline, the school's DSL, a trusted adult) in every e-safety lesson. Test whether pupils remember it a week later.