Case Study:
Micklefield Church of England Primary School

Micklefield Church of England Primary School were keen to respond to a rise in online safety issues when they purchased their certified school package through National Online Safety. 

The school, which provides education for children aged 2 through to 11, have taken a comprehensive approach to online safety and subsequently achieved their accredited status. 

We spoke to Lucy Gillatt, Early Years Lead, Family Unit Teacher and Online Safety Lead, to gauge just how much of a positive impact National Online Safety has had. 

Why did you choose National Online Safety? 

We’re a really small school but we’ve definitely seen a rise in issues, especially at Key Stage 2 and, I teach in Early Years and I’ve seen the things that children are talking about when they come in. 

It was a real focus of ours to make sure that we were doing as much as we could to try and educate the parents as well as supporting the children with any issues that they had. 

How have you found the service from National Online Safety? 

The team have been good in the sense that they’ve asked me to send a list of all my staff and then they’ve uploaded it for me. 

They also informed me of what we need to do in order to achieve our certified status, which just made it a lot clearer! 

How much of a benefit has National Online Safety’s resources been to your school? 

We’re getting really good engagement with sharing things through closed Facebook groups for each class.  

So just sharing the quick snapshots of information allows them to then put a parental control on a certain app and those little bits of information that you can just drip-feed. 

If you can have that shock headline tactic around what’s being shared, then they’re more likely to look at it. 

What were the goals for using our resources? 

Children were receiving messages through headsets, TikTok and Snapchat too. 

We’ve got some children who’ve been on some of the chatrooms on Reddit and things like that, so we wanted to make sure that parents knew, had the right settings on and were informed as much as they could be about all the different platforms. 

If you could draw one positive from National Online Safety’s resources, what would it be? 

Just the control that it’s let me have over the subject. 

It’s really easy for everyone to sign up to and I can see who has done the training, so that I can make sure we’ve got it all completed. 

What is your feedback on our weekly #WakeUpWednesday guides? How would you say they’ve added to your e-safety approach? 

During lockdown the #WakeUpWednesday guides were a good way of keeping in touch with parents – I used the guides as a weekly email. 

It’s just the way they’re set out, it’s not condescending, it’s not patronising to them, it’s just really informative. 

Staff and children have all said it’s been helpful and we’ve found it really beneficial. 

How much of a benefit has the ability to undertake courses and training on an online platform, in your own time been? 

It has been really useful. The parents that have undertaken the training have found it really useful. 

I’ve got governors, TAs, teachers and then parents who have all done training – so to have something that’s just so easy to go onto is great. 

You recently achieved your Certified School Status – how rewarding has it been to be awarded with this? 

It’s really good! 

It’s also really good for me, because I can show what we’ve already achieved and how many parents we’ve had involved.