Having an email address comes with associated risks, such as:
online bullying
emails from strangers
spam emails
circular emails
exposure to inappropriate and/or upsetting content
Our students are first given access to their school email address in Year 6, although its use is restricted to sending and receiving emails within the school (i.e. they can only exchange emails with other @stjulians.com email addresses).
If parents want to set up an email address for their child to use at home, they should be aware that most email platforms have minimum age requirements. For example the Google minimum age requirement for using Gmail is 13 years old.
However they do provide a system called Family Link that allows you to create a monitored account for a child.
For younger children we strongly recommend using a dedicated monitored email system such as one of the ones below.
Please note that we are not endorsing any specific platform, but we do suggest researching monitored email systems and being aware of the risks and discussing them with your child.
It is also important to understand that, once a child has access to their own email address, it will then be possible for them to create accounts on other online platforms using that email address.
If you are not monitoring that email address, then you won't know which platforms your child is signing up for.