Case Study:
International School of Latvia
Founded in 1994, The International School of Latvia offers an education for children of all nationalities from 2 to 18 years old. The campus serves over 400 students and the school has enjoyed rapid growth after the past few years.
The International School of Latvia recognised that due to the ever-changing digital landscape, they needed to empower their whole school community to keep pupils safe online. By signing up for our Certified School package, the school demonstrated their commitment to prioritising online safety.
Sharon Brown, IT Lead, is delighted with the impact that their National Online Safety membership has had so far. He hopes to continue embedding our training and resources within the school.
Joining National Online Safety
Reflecting on her position at the International School of Latvia, Sharon said: “My role is considered a whole-school position, as I assist all the teachers with online safety and digital citizenship. I can curate resources and share those within the school community.”
”We started our membership in 2021, when we were learning virtually due to COVID-19.” she continued.
She said: “We were approached by National Online Safety, and I realised there were a lot of benefits that would be useful for our school.”
Being on top of current online safety concerns was a key reason the school joined National Online Safety. Whilst the children are encouraged to take an active role in keeping themselves safe online, Sharon also stresses the importance of ensuring that school staff and parents are properly informed.
“Initially, we wanted to use the resources to share with our whole school community.” she said.
“One of the main things I liked about National Online Safety, is that there were a lot of resources available for parents and carers.”
She explained: “This was particularly important in a time when so many students were spending a lot of their time online, and there were certainly some dangers associated with that.”
“Since then, we have been utilising the CPD for our school staff too.” she added.
High-quality 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 the International School of Latvia.
Sharon said: “We compared the courses available from National Online Safety to those of our previous provider, and we saw that there was a lot more value there.”
“We are in the process now of using the CPD dashboard to check how many of our staff are completing the courses and webinars.” she continued.
She said: “As we were working remotely for so long, it’s hard to gauge the response from our school staff so far. This year, we hope to engage a lot more with the resources!”
Their chosen online safety training had to be flexible to work for the school – something that we at National Online Safety were able to cater for.
Sharon said “I think that our school staff are extremely appreciative of the fact that they can complete the CPD in their own time. The courses are far better packaged, in comparison to the previous provider we were using.”
“The fact that National online Safety has resources for multiple stakeholders in the school community is excellent.” she added.
She continued: “There are lesson plans, as well as webinars, courses and guides that address specific, topical issues. The parent and carer access is great too.”
“It’s really quite broad in scope, in terms of the resources available.” she nodded.
At National Online Safety, we’ve made it simple to monitor the progression of staff development on our platform.
Sharon explains how useful this has been for her school: “I’m looking at the CPD dashboard and noticing that we can upload our own CPD and track that, which is brilliant.”