One of the UK’s leading E-Safety experts, Karl Hopwood, delivered a fascinating day of lectures to help promote safer behaviour and digital literacy across Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools, during UKYouth’s National Safeguarding month.

Mr Hopwood, who is a member of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, spoke to all pupils (years 7 – 13) at Monmouth School for Girls and Monmouth School for Boys.

The former head teacher also gave an insightful hour-long talk to parents from both schools, emphasising the importance of E-safety for their children.

Year 10 students commented on the presentation: “Everyone appreciated how be brought up both sides of internet safety, he made us feel very comfortable and made you listen… best C4L talk…really relatable…directed towards our age group…”

Year 9 were also impressed: “It was really interesting…really connected with the audience…I learnt and remembered a lot.” With Year 11 stating how ‘useful and relevant’ the information was: “personalised and covering topics that we haven’t learnt before.”

Mr Hopwood was invited to Monmouth by Miss Joanna Johnson, Confidence4Life (C4L) Co-ordinator at Monmouth School for Girls.

“Online safety is very important because it affects everybody but often we aren’t certain when it will affect us,” said Mr Hopwood.

“The most important thing we can do is embrace E-safety and not be scared of it, but recognise that if we get things wrong the consequences can be serious.

“It’s important for pupils to feel they can talk to someone, ideally a parent or a staff member, about any concerns they may have.

“If children have a problem on Instagram or Snapchat there are reporting features available within the apps and it’s important for them to speak out immediately because problems online can sometimes get out of hand and potentially affect their future prospects.”