Internet access at school

[IamMum]

I have been asked by my kids' primary school to sign a "user agreement and parental permission form for internet access". Basically by signing the form i'm agreeing that I will not hold the school responsible for any inappropriate material that my child may obtain. I would like to know if other parents at other schools have been asked to sign similar forms. Is this normal practice?

The school will have very high Internet safety. Absolutely at it's highest setting.

But of course the school can't guarantee 100% that the highest settings will work.

So if they want your kid to ever use google, then you need to sign this.

Otherwise they'd have to restrict access to certain sites, and your child wouldn't learn how to do proper research.

Some schools ask you to sign forms like this, some don't.

Yes we've signed them, at primary and secodary. What IndigoBell said is true. DS2 says the security is set so high they can't get into stuff they need. There is usually a teccy kid who can get around it though .

Security settings are set so high even teachers can't access much, I remember when CBBies was a banned site!

But despite the high settings, somebody in your child's class will miraculously be able to access something innappropriate. Children just can. The forms are to prevent you getting upset.

the forms are there as a precaution.

I teach ICT in secondary school and we are often playing 'catch-up' with inappropriate sites as they have very innocent names but can contain very inappropriate material!

However, the majority of these sites are not found by accident but through word of mouth and as such the home school agreement covers the school in terms of they can not police the internet 24 hours a day of new sites being created that are not appropriate.

All internet sites are filtered (too much in my opinion, but that's another thread ), but there are occasions when something slips through due to the words that are used on the site being 'innocent'