Blog – Latest stories tagged 'tootoot'

Tootoot CEO and founder Michael Brennan has written to invite you to Pupil Voice Week 2019, running from the 23rd - 27th September!

Last year over 270,000 pupils from around the world celebrated the week, and this year will be the biggest yet, with more partners and free resources than ever before.

Pupil Voice Week is an initiative started by tootoot, we are a pupil voice and safeguarding app used by over 600 schools across the UK. The week is now in its fourth year, and with the help of our partners Internet Matters, eAware, Safeguarding Essentials, TrainingSchoolz, Kidscape, Ditch The Label and Madlug we have created a range of lesson activities, lesson plans and assemblies and staff training for your school to enjoy.

Our aim is to educate pupils about the benefits of using their voice, encouraging a long-term change of culture beyond the dates of the week. We hope that by providing schools with the knowledge and resources required to help you promote the importance of the pupil voice, more of your children and young people will speak-up about the issues that are concerning them, with a view to creating a positive change in the future.

With the theme ‘Our Voice’ Pupil Voice Week this year focuses on encouraging pupils to unite their voices and speak out about issues that are affecting their community.

We want every child to believe that their voice contributes towards a happier and safer world, and that by speaking up they are making a real difference. Which is why the Pupil Voice Week provides the tools to help teach your pupils about what a positive voice is, how they can use their voices and ways they can work together to create a happier world.

Your free resource pack also covers topics such as anti-bullying and cyberbullying to highlight to children and young people the impact their voices can have when they don’t use them positively.

Click here to register your school for free.

Tootoot launch free World Pride celebration toolkit

Whilst society has come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, LGBT+ people still face stigma and prejudice in their everyday lives.

This prejudice can start early in an individual’s life, young people who identify as LGBT+ are more likely to be bullied in school and, in 2017, Stonewall found that 45 per cent of LGBT+ pupils in Britain’s schools were bullied for being LGBT+.

This can significantly affect the mental health of LGBT+ pupils when they are older - there is overwhelming research showing the correlation between being bullied as an adolescent LGBT+ person and developing serious mental illnesses later on in life. (Nancy L. Beckerman & Charles Auerbach, 2014)

There has been new legislation brought in this year giving better to guidance to schools about how to teach topics such as LGBT+ relationships and identities to their pupils. This will help pupils to understand that there is nothing wrong with being LGBT+ and will in turn help to remove prejudices and discrimination.

Since launching, tootoot has supported over 140 students to speak-up about LGBT+ cases ranging from homophobic bullying and name-calling to hate crimes. The number of cases reported on tootoot increased by 144 per cent between 2016 and 2018. This could reflect that already pupils have an increased awareness of what LGBT+ discrimination is, and are choosing to seek support for it using tootoot.

For Pride month we have created a free toolkit to help your school celebrate pride, improve awareness and make it easier for your students to speak-up.

Your toolkit will include:

• Free targeted resources to encourage LGBT+ inclusiveness in your school
  
• Access to tootmood – the simple feedback app that makes it easy to track the feelings and attitudes of your pupils
  
• Access to tootoot – the pupil voice software that gives pupils a simple and trusted way to talk about any concerns

Click here to sign-up to the toolkit and we will be in contact shortly after.

Tootoot are now offering schools a free trial of their award-winning pupil voice and anti-bullying app! Tootoot’s founder Michael Brennan explains how tootoot can support your school, and why you should sign-up for the free trial today.

In recent years there has been a rise in the wellbeing and mental health issues raised by children and young people, in part this is due to the unique pressures young people face with things such as social media and exam stress.

It has been recognised that children identify and report more concerns, such as mental health and homophobic bullying, than are reported by their teachers; showing a clear need for tools that make it easier for pupils to speak-up about their concerns.

Research released in Autumn 2018 found that pupils are more likely to seek support for mental health online, using digital tools such as phone apps to speak up about their concerns.

I want all young people to have the key to unlock the support they need to reach their full potential which is why I founded tootoot, the app that makes it easier for pupils to speak-up confidentially, and ensure that all pupil concerns are raised, listened to and resolved.

Tootoot saves lives
I used my experiences of bullying to create a pupil voice app that is trusted by over 15,000 teachers to enhance wellbeing and safeguarding for their pupils, making it easier for pupils to speak-up and feel that their concerns are listened to and properly resolved.

When I started tootoot my hope was that it would help just one pupil speak-up. Tootoot has already saved lives, giving over a quarter of a million children the opportunity to speak-up about concerns such as bullying, cyberbullying, grooming and mental health concerns:

“tootoot is my only friend” – North West Primary Pupil

“I really need to speak to you because lately I’ve been thinking about life and how I just hate mine and how I just want to die”- Primary Pupil

“One of our learners was living in a tent in a local park, we only discovered this because they spoke-up using the tootoot app” – North East Learning Provider

Tootoot and Ofsted
Tootoot also supports schools with their Ofsted inspections, making it quicker and easier for teachers to gather data about bullying and safeguarding incidents as well as demonstrating how effectively the staff and pupils deal with instances of bullying behaviour.

“Tootoot has been an amazing addition to our school. It has helped us learn about a number of pupil concerns earlier than we would have learned about them with traditional methods such as face-to-face reporting.

During our recent Ofsted Inspection, the inspectors were really impressed with tootoot and how we used the system. We used the dashboard reports from tootoot to demonstrate to the Ofsted inspectors the positive impact our curriculum, safeguarding and wellbeing activities have had for our pupil groups – it was received really well.”

Try tootoot for free
Tootoot are now offering schools a free four-week trial of this award-winning pupil voice and anti-bullying platform. Sign your school up here tootoot.co.uk/sign-up.

For more information you can visit tootoot.co.uk or email freetrials@tootoot.co.uk. You can also follow tootoot on twitter @tootootofficial