For Luck Lane, a SHARE Primary Academy, equipping their staff with the latest online safety knowledge is of paramount importance.
The school, located in Huddersfield, has always placed a huge emphasis on ensuring that all pupils are taught in a way which allows them to make safe decisions when they are online.
Dan Gough, Head of School, explained how they have embedded a culture of online safety across the whole school community.
An ever-changing online world
With the online world rapidly evolving, it was collectively felt at Luck Lane Primary Academy that in order to be equipped, a proactive rather than reactive approach was needed.
Dan Gough, Head of School, declared: "Technology is ever-changing."
"With the increased social pressures that children are facing at the moment, particularly older children and teenagers, we're seeing now that younger children have mobile phones with access to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook." he continued.
Being on top of current online safety concerns was a key reason for the school in choosing to join National Online Safety. Whilst the children are encouraged to take an active role in keeping themselves safe online, Dan also stresses the importance of ensuring that school staff and parents are properly informed.
"We're trying to educate the children that whatever they put online, they may delete it from their account, but things cannot be permanently deleted."
He explained: "As educators, we need to inform children of the benefits and potential dangers that the internet and technology bring."
Parental engagement
Besides the award-winning online safety training, our weekly #WakeUpWednesday series has given the school another means of providing informative and eye-catching online safety information to their whole school community.
"What really drew us to the programme was the online safety education for parents." Dan revealed.
He said: "The fact that parents can sign up really easily, we can link them to explainer videos, print off the #WakeUpWednesday guides and put them on display at school, it's just really easy to use and that's what we liked."
"We send out the guides all the time, the Squid Game and TikTok ones are very prevalent at the moment."
"We had a big push at parent's evening, and the parents I demonstrated the platform to were overwhelmed with how advantageous it can be."
"Ultimately, our goal is to get every parent and carer signed up to the platform." Dan declared.
Empowering the whole school community
"Staff engagement is really high. We dedicate some staff training time each week for National Online Safety."
"It's something that we have found really, really useful."
Remote, online learning hub
Time is of the essence for school staff and, with this in mind, Dan stated that the ability to track all staff progress through a centralised hub has been extremely beneficial.
"Staff can download their certificates and use those for performance management." he said.
Dan continued: "The CPD reports that you can print of are really beneficial as we can see which staff members have completed courses and training."
"The food hygiene, first aid and safeguarding courses are great, and we are certainly tapping into those."
The benefits of becoming a Certified School
When asked what the school’s biggest takeaway has been from the Certified School programme, Dan said: "Being able to target parents, at the point where online safety issues are cropping up. That is probably the biggest benefit for me, along with the fact it's really easy to use."
