School Leaders

Welcome to Cyber Friendly Primary Schools  

The ethos of a school is enhanced by strong leadership and the demonstration of clear online social and emotional learning expectations.

This tool is designed to help school leaders reflect on their online expectations, policies, procedures and the support currently offered to the school community.

What do I need to do?

To use this tool we ask you to reflect on each of the statements below whilst thinking about how you can develop online social and emotional learning skills within your school community.

The – and + sliders are not designed to score or rank responses, instead they allow school leaders to reflect on their current level of knowledge, policies and practices and where they might need additional information to better support their school community including students, families and staff members. When the slider is moved, a collection of useful resources will appear that have been selected to assist leaders in collaborating effectively within the school community in the online environment.

The resources included have been developed by researchers, organisations and agencies who produce the latest evidence based information about children online.

Alternatively, search for each of these skills in the Knowledge Hub for more information.

 

  • Online SEL Behaviour Guidelines

     

  • How has our school developed and promoted our expectations and behaviour and online SEL behaviour guidelines?

    • The School’s online SEL expectations need to be developed collaboratively with students, staff and parents to provide a common understanding of what are the online SEL expectations for all the school community.
    • Regular communication of the online SEL expectations - and consequences of poor online behaviour - is essential so all members of the school community are aware of the actions that will be taken, e.g. school website or portal, newsletters, assemblies, staff meetings and school planning processes
    • By understanding what constitutes online SEL behaviours staff (and ideally parents) can model appropriate behaviour and ensure students also engage in these behaviours. School staff can provide constant, prosocial adult modelling.
    • The eSafety Toolkit for Schools supports schools to create safer online environments and includes resources to help schools improve their practices.

  • Positive Online SEL Skills

     

  • How do our school’s behaviour policies reinforce positive online SEL skills?

    • Clear and consistent policies and procedures related to student behaviour (when promoted effectively), send a strong message to the whole-school community about the school’s beliefs and actions to encourage a safe and supportive environment, both online and offline. Policies that encourage positive online SEL development and behaviour also build on the responsibilities and rights of students to meet the normative expectations of the school community.
    • Online SEL skills include:
      • Self awareness online:
        • Recognising feeling emotions and moods online
      • Managing ourselves online:
        • Managing reactions to emotions, setting rules or limits, self regulating online
      • Social awareness online:
        • Respecting others online, understanding positive and negative relationships online
      • Decision making online
        • Evaluating benefits and risks online and seeking help
      • Relationship skills online
        • Communicating respectfully online
      • Use the eSafety Toolkit for Schools to help prevent and respond to online safety incidents.
      • School leaders can support staff to implement policies by ensuring staff are:
        • very familiar with the behaviour policies and procedures and act on these
        • aware of and are comfortable with their role and understand role boundaries, especially in the online environments.

  • Staff Response to Incidents

     

  • How do our school’s incident response and case management of incidents reinforce positive online SEL skills?

    Clear and consistent policies and procedures guides school action for early response and case management of incidents if they occur. The following 7-step response plan can be used to respond to online behaviour incidents:

    Step One:

    Discuss the situation with the students involved, staff, families (as necessary) and administration staff (depending upon level of harm or risk potentially involved). Use the Co-LATE model to understand the situation and any history which may be relevant to the incident. Ensure notes are taken during this process (as for every step):

    The acronym Co-LATE guides the user to consider the following five actions during a conversation with students experiencing some difficulties:

    Co nfidentiality
    L isten
    A cknowledge concerns
    T alk about the options
    E nd with encouragement
    (Friendly Schools, Evidence for Practice)

    Confidentiality: be clear with students about when you may need to talk to other adults about the content of their conversation (for example, duty of disclosure)

    Listen: Active listening shows the students you are interested in what they have to say and enables you to confirm you have understood the details of the conversation accurately.  Ask open-ended questions eg: “tell me more about what happened next…”

    Acknowledge their concerns: in the form of paraphrasing students’ concerns and their reaction to the situation, for example – “that sounds pretty tough”.

    Talk about the options: This step is likely to be most effective when you encourage and help students to identify solutions to their own concerns. Only offer your own suggestions if the students agree they need help. Responses suggested by and endorsed by students will likely be put into action faster. When identifying responses with students, it is important to also discuss the positive and negative consequences of each to enable students to make an informed decision about how to proceed with the situation.

    End with encouragement: a summary of what was discussed can help students make a decision about how to proceed with their situation and provides an opportunity for you to give encouragement to the student. At this point it may also be helpful to establish a time to have a follow-up meeting with the student, to discuss the effectiveness of implementing their strategy.

    Step Two: Assess the level of risk or harm (consider the frequency, intensity, type and the duration of the behaviour) associated with the incident and triage as high, moderate or low. A guide to dealing with the sharing of explicit material at your school  provides support and advice to school leadership teams around the sharing of explicit materials. Legal Aid WA’s 'R U Legal?’ Program includes sessions for young people, a fact sheet for parents, legal advice about sexting and image-based abuse, filming young people fighting, and cyberbullying. It also includes information about the legal consequences if young people break these laws. Use this risk assessment to decide what action needs to occur next eg: who to contact – see Step 3.

    Step Three: Determine who needs to be contacted, including:

    • governance structures – system level and/or school board
    • Principal – administration team; tutor or other teacher(s) of the young people involved
    • pastoral care team
    • families
    • school support services and external support agencies if required

    Step Four: Collect, record and file all information related to each case. Ensure each stage has been documented and recorded.

    Step Five: Agree on the plan to be implemented. It is important for schools to keep in mind that students’ poor online behaviour usually indicates a need for extra help with online SEL, in the same way that children struggling with academic learning receive extra help (EEF). The eSafety Commissioner has compiled the Online Safety and Wellbeing Directory with links to information and support.

    Step Six: Implement the agreed plan of action. Reinforce positive behaviour. Ensure all vested parties (as determined in report Step 3) have a copy of the agreed plan and are working together to reinforce positive behaviours.

    Step Seven: Check in with all parties involved in the incident at regular predetermined intervals. Offer additional support to those students who are experiencing difficulties adhering to the bounds of the agreed plan.

  • Professional Practice

     

  • How does our school support staff receive regular continued professional development to teach online SEL skills?

    • Ongoing professional learning opportunities about social and emotional learning enable staff members to feel prepared and motivated to implement whole-school initiatives for online SEL.
    • The professional learning focusses on specific strategies for cyber safety education. It provides support for teachers to develop including opportunities to learn about new technologies and their positive and negative uses. The eSafety Comisisioner has national professional learning webinars for teachers aligned with the Professional Standards and the Australian Curriculum and a pre-service teacher training program for those who are about to commence teaching.
    • Media Smarts’ Digital Literacy 101 is a helpful Canadian resource that can be used to help teachers implement online literacy in their classrooms. It can also help teachers to develop online literacy lessons and activities tailored to meet students’ needs.
    • The “Classroom Guide: Integrating digital literacy into your classroom practice” helps teachers to build online literacy into their classroom practices.
    • School leaders can facilitate the sharing of knowledge and practices by encouraging and enabling opportunities for staff to network with each other and surrounding schools on a regular basis. Networking opportunities help staff to:
      • exchange of ideas and resources such as how others respond to specific online issues
      • focus on continuous improvement
      • learn about the effectiveness of programs, practices and policies implemented in other settings
    • AITSL's Australian Professional Standard for Principals and Leadership Profiles outlines what school leaders are expected to know, understand and do to succeed in their work. Engaging with these resources and tools regularly can also assist staff members to feel prepared and motivated to implement whole-school initiatives for online SEL.

  • Engaging Families and Communities

     

  • How does our school encourage the active participation and contribution of students’ families and relevant community agencies to support online SEL development?

    Family Participation: 

    • Schools that encourage the active participation of students’ families recognise that most student online behaviour occurs at home. Addressing safer and positive behaviour online is the responsibility of the whole-school community. Creating linkages with relevant health, educational and community agencies that provide services to students and their families will support school action.
    • The eSafety Toolkit for School’s Engage resources provide strategies to engage the whole school community and create a shared understanding of, and responsibility for, online safety.
    • The EEF’s Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning Guidance Report helps school leaders review and act on their school’s approach to engaging parents.
    • The Australian Government, Department of Education’s “Family-School Partnerships Framework” was developed to promote and guide partnership building. For each key dimension there is a set of suggested strategies that can be used to support school communities in building and improving their family-school partnership. The assessment tool can help schools identify areas of strength and focus areas for further work.
    • Families can play an important role in monitoring their child’s online behaviour and communicating with their child about positive and safer behaviour online. Given the disparities in technological knowledge among students and their parents or carers, providing families with opportunities to learn about the latest devices and their positive and negative uses, is a crucial component of effective family communication. Examples of opportunities may include*:
      • Providing families with information about children’s online SEL, how this content connects to other learning areas, and how they can support their online knowledge and skill development at home.
      • Assigning online homework SEL activities that involve families.
      • Organising workshops to help families meet students’ online SEL needs in appropriate ways. BeYou’s Organising Speakers Guide has some advice on what to consider before inviting a speaker to conduct a workshop at your school. Choose speakers who are a Trusted eSafety Provider (TEP) who meet the eSafety Commissioner’s standards and are up-to-date with the latest online safety research, trends and online practices.

    *Adapted from the CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL , TOOL: Strategies for Establishing School Family Partnerships

    Community Participation

    • Working to create and strengthen links with relevant health, education and community agencies will help to support the schools’ action to support online SEL development
    • Due to the social, psychological, emotional, physical and academic effects associated with negative online incidents, it is imperative to build and maintain strong partnerships with relevant professionals both within the school, such as student services teams, and external to the school, for example, social workers, youth workers, clinical psychologists, mental health agencies. The eSafety Commissioner has compiled the Online Safety and Wellbeing Directory with links to information and support.
    • Forming partnerships with IT professionals is also useful to help inform school action to address online SEL behaviours. This can help schools, students and families keep apprised of technological development and the implications of this for online behaviour.
    • Links can also be formed with agencies such as Legal Aid WA and their R U Legal? Program. This program includes learning opportunities for young people, a fact sheet for parents, legal advice about sexting and image-based abuse, filming young people fighting, and cyberbullying. It also includes information about the legal consequences if young people break these laws.
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Additional Resources

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Further information about how parents and teachers can help children develop positive online social and emotional learning skills can be found by choosing an option below: