Teaching Online Safety from Reception
Children as young as reception age are being educated about the risks associated with social media at Kings Road Primary School in Trafford, Greater Manchester. The school has established a lunchtime club to address conflicts arising from online interactions among pupils.
Kings Road Primary School incorporates online safety lessons starting at age five.
Jo Whiteside, pastoral lead, said "fall-outs continue into the evening" and the school was left "picking up the pieces" the following day - to try and "repair" relationships between children.
The latest Ofsted data indicates that 20% of children aged three to five and 42% of those aged eight to nine own their own mobile phones.
A BBC survey found that only 2% of Key Stage Two (ages seven to 12) teachers in the North West reported not noticing mobile phones causing "social or friendship issues" among pupils.
Issues are increasingly prevalent among Year 4 and 5 students.
Ann Jaffrey, network manager at Kings Road Primary, said "it's never too young" to teach children about online safety.
"We start from Reception," she told BBC North West Tonight.
"The school has a responsibility to make sure whether they're in school or outside school that they're not on anything they shouldn't be.
"Because anything they do go on at home, is coming back into school - because of the friendship groups."
The Hub: Supporting Pupils with Social Media Conflicts
Whiteside explained that the school addresses issues stemming from social media communications between pupils during the lunchtime club, known as The Hub.
"Children will have fallouts here in school - and where at one time those fallouts would end at the end of the school day, now children are in WhatsApp groups and those fallouts continue into an evening," she said.
"Behaviours that children show in those aren't the same as the ones as they would show here at school.
"And I'm picking up the pieces of those [behaviours] the following day - to try and repair those relationships with children."
Phone Usage and Pressure Among Older Pupils
The head teacher at Kings Road Primary, Darren Morgan, noted that the primary issues related to phone use are mostly among older pupils.
"It's mainly Year Six who have phones - I would say 80% of them do.
"There's a lot of pressure for children to have a phone in Year Six and then that pressure increases by the time they get to Year Seven where it's pretty close to 100% that have phones."
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