Case Study:
Ashton Primary School

Safeguarding pupils is a whole-school responsibility. But the recent lockdown brought new challenges, particularly in relation to online protection for children.

At National Online Safety, we’ve supported thousands of schools throughout this challenging period, with both of our Safe Remote Education and Certified School accreditations offering a comprehensive online way in which to complete training.

Ashton Primary School have embraced what they saw as an opportunity to empower their whole-school community – subsequently achieving accreditation in both programmes.

Recognising the importance

Year 4 teacher and computing subject leader Michelle Harrison-Baines recognised the need to safeguard all pupils as they got used to a new way of learning.

She stated: “We thought it was really important.

“Particularly with remote learning, we wanted to make sure the children were as safe as they could be.

“We’re really pleased and proud of it because the whole school community has come together in order to achieve that. It’s the school staff, governors and senior leadership team.

“It was reaffirming, as it showed we were doing what we were supposed to be – it was really good to have that really clear guidance.”

Ease of use

Crucial for the school too was reassuring parents of the safeguarding measures which were being put in place.

Furthermore, Mrs Harrison-Baines says all staff and stakeholders have praised our platform’s flexibility and ease of use, which has afforded the opportunity to complete training at any time in any place.

“The parents were really pleased and proud of what the school has done! The whole school have also said how good National Online Safety is,” she revealed.

“They’ve spoken about how easy it is to use and how good it is for training at home as well, because people have been able to complete the courses in their own time at their own pace.

“I love the way in which the courses are presented. They’re divided up into bitesize chunks, which allows you to get to the nitty gritty of the topic.

“We would definitely recommend National Online Safety to every school that we speak to!”

Stay abreast of all things online safety

At National Online Safety, we know how essential time is for all of the school workforce, which is why we’ve created our monthly update series; designed to round-up all of the latest online safety news from the past month.

She said: “What I’ve also found really good are the monthly update webinars.

“No teacher has the time to research that information, so it’s great to watch them myself before then distributing out to all of our staff. They just ensure that all staff are up to date with what’s going on.

“There’s information in there that we wouldn’t normally come across – so it’s brilliant.”