Case Study:
Rawlins Academy

With the online world changing daily, it was clear to Rawlins Academy that they needed to empower their whole school community to keep pupils safe online.

Ultimately deciding to sign up for our Certified School package, the school has since showcased how highly they prioritise online safety.

Cathy Robinson, Deputy Headteacher, is delighted with the impact that National Online Safety membership has had so far – and hopes to continue embedding our training and resources within the school.

The importance of online safety

Reflecting on the continuing influence of the pandemic, Cathy explained that Rawlins Academy had to adapt to new ways of safeguarding their pupils when they were online.

"Online safety is absolutely huge, especially post COVID-19," she nodded. "There's been an increase in cyberbullying, and I think children are becoming more and more attached to their mobile devices."

"We knew that we could do more with online safety, and we wanted to do more," she confirmed.

Certified School Membership

Reflecting on the overall achievement of becoming a Certified School, Cathy believes the accolade will further motivate stakeholders to continue utilising our award-winning resources and training.

"National Online Safety provided guidance on how we could achieve the Certified School accreditation,” she recalled. "It's about making the whole school community more aware of online risks – the accreditation is the icing on the cake really."

"We needed something that ticked all of our boxes," Cathy explained. "We wanted to be able to access it for lessons, use it for staff CPD, and – most importantly – we needed parental engagement."

She reasoned: "The children's knowledge outweighs my knowledge on online safety, and it’s the same for most parents and carers."

A wealth of online safety training and resources

At times, trying to keep on top of the latest online and tech trends can feel overwhelming.

Therefore, the breadth of resources available on our learning hub – and the ease with which these can be rolled out to staff, parents, carers and pupils – has been a huge success for Rawlins Academy.

"The webinars and courses have been our most successful area," Cathy nodded. "At the beginning of the year, we had everybody complete the Online Reputation course."

At National Online Safety, we’ve made it simple to monitor the progression of staff development on our platform.

Cathy explains how useful this has been for her school: "We tracked progress to ensure that everyone in the school had completed that course."

She continued: “We’ve been able to use the other courses too, for food hygiene and health and safety. It's fantastic to have the CPD in one place; that flexibility means that staff are able to access it at any time."

Evaluating our library of award-winning online safety resources, Cathy stated: "The quality of the training is good. We know that it's up-to-date, and the flexibility is really beneficial."

She continued: "We'd like to utilise the lesson plans too, alongside the videos, to ensure that our PSHE/RSHE curriculum is as good as it possibly can be. I think so far, it's the extremely cost-effective CPD which has been the biggest benefit."