Case Study:
Eastbury Primary School
With over 700 hours of CPD completed, Eastbury Primary School have been emphatic in their stance towards keeping children safe online.
Claire Trench, Deputy Headteacher and Designated Safeguarding Lead was full of praise for both our award-winning platform and her staff’s attitude towards developing and improving their knowledge.
Parental engagement has been encouraging too, with our weekly #WakeUpWednesday series proving immensely popular and informative.
“National Online Safety just seemed to fit”
It was crucial that online safety training which worked for the school was flexible – something that we here at National Online Safety were able to cater for.
Mrs Trench said: “I was looking for training that could fit in around the constraints of the day and timetables, because you’ve got to keep that balance between mental health and wellbeing for staff and hitting all of the areas which you need to hit for both criteria and statutory things.
“National Online Safety just seemed to fit that and, with Covid as well, we had a lot of staff working from home, which meant that it was all online and I could just email through what needed to be done.
“I took on the role of being the designated safeguarding lead, and with that came a lot of awareness, with everything being different at the time, of being online safe.”
Supporting parents
Children have had the opportunity to explore more technology throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and, with this in mind, it was vital for Eastbury to upskill parents too.
Our weekly #WakeUpWednesday series served as a perfect solution for this need, thanks to concise and up-to-date guidance on the latest apps and games.
“Taking on National Online Safety at just the right time gave us all of that information we needed,” she explained.
“We put the posters (#WakeUpWednesday guides) onto our Dojo system, which we use to communicate with parents and we also put them on the website.
“It just helped them with all the safety tips, because everything was online. Their children would have been using phones, PlayStations, computers, Microsoft Teams and also the Zoom sessions – it really helped them with more information.”
Positivity from all
Mrs Trench explained how staff feedback is essential when formulating the impact of an external provider and, subsequently revealed that when it came to National Online Safety, the response was an overwhelmingly positive one.
She stated: “The staff have really engaged & they all really liked it.
“They liked the ease, the fact that they could do it in their own time, you could start, stop and maybe go back if you needed a break.
“Also, they particularly liked the staff who are deploying the courses – they said they were really ease to listen to.
“We’ll definitely be re-using the system for another year and signing up!”