Blog – Latest stories tagged 'tootoot'

tootoot, partnered with Barclays, has received funding to provide every school in the UK with the tootoot safeguarding platform and application for FREE!

Initially being rolled at in the North West, Regional schools commissioner, Paul Smith, is driving the roll out of a new safeguarding and prevention platform and app, tootoot, across all primary schools, secondary schools colleges and Universities in the UK, in an effort to combat all forms of bullying and safeguarding issues.

The initiative, which is also supported by actor Will Mellor, will provide students with an online platform to securely and anonymously report any incidents directly to their place of learning.

Paul Smith commented: “Having measures in place to prevent all forms of bullying, and a clear process for reporting incidents, is incredibly important for the safety of vulnerable students. Tootoot is an effective tool to help in these situations and, by giving 4,500 places of learning and over 1 million students access to this platform, we will have a much better idea of the scale of problems and we will hopefully see a significant reduction in the number of cases.”

Tootoot is available 24/7, 365 days a year and is six times more effective than face-to-face reporting. It is used to support the education system by raising awareness of safeguarding issues and improving the overall learning environment for young people across the whole of the UK. The platform and app, developed with the support of Barclay's, will also help to promote equality, support diversity and increase confidence in school pupils and college students across the regions.

Tootoot developer Michael Brennan, said: “Modern bullying comes in many different shapes and sizes. But whatever its form, it is a subject that is often very difficult to talk about if you become a victim. That’s why I developed tootoot, and by rolling it out to all schools it will give a huge number of young people the confidence to report what is happening to them.”

To date tootoot has already helped over 55,000 students have a voice to speak up in over 100 schools, in less than 6 month, across the globe.

Tootoot has also become an educational lead for places of learning, local authorities and MAT’s with The Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 and their Prevent Strategies. The CTSA 2015 states local authorities have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”.

tootoot for students

The first safeguarding platform and app, developed in partnership with Barclays used in primary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities, which allows students to safely report any worries and incidents of bullying, cyber bullying, racism, extremism, radicalisation, sexism, mental health and homophobic issues directly to their place of learning.

tootoot for staff

Recording safeguarding incidents is of the utmost importance for educational institutions, which is why we’ve made it better. We developed tootoot with the help of safeguarding officers across the country, drawing upon hundreds of years of collective experience and expertise to ensure that the recording, handling and tracking of incidents is easier than ever before. That’s right, no more paperwork!

tootoot for senior leadership

With the click of a button, tootoot’s real-time dashboard collects, analyses and creates detailed, easy to read reports instantly, anytime. No more wasting time hunting through filing cabinets hours before an Ofsted inspection, regulatory body visit, or governors and SLT meeting.

tootoot for parents

All parents worry about their children whether they’re at primary school or university. Many of the safeguarding officers and team members that developed tootoot are parents themselves and the safety of young learners and students are our highest priority. The parent feature within tootoot, allows parents to report their own concerns anonymously, directly to their child’s place of learning.

If you would like to sign up your school free today then click here or visit www.tootoot.co.uk to sign up or find out more.

Extremism has suddenly arisen within the compounds of schools across the UK, and pupils are in danger if schools do not provide a channel to report such behaviour or activities.

Safeguarding and protecting pupils should be a schools number one priority according to 86% of parents asked in a recent questionnaire. John Hayes, Security Minister and the Department for Education has recently outlined that all schools and staff have a duty to report incidents of extremism, radicalisation and safeguarding.

Yet what measures are schools putting in place to protect pupils and staff against the latest safeguarding threat. Ofsted are focussing heavily on a schools ability to recognise, understand and report incidents of extremism and radicalisation. However services that support the school network are failing to provide adequate answers, resources and training to help schools deal with this new and ever growing threat. SLT teams are being expected to quickly become experts on this new safeguarding issue, yet without a guided support network, how can any school or member of staff be expected to provide the evidence and information required if they don’t know what this is.

Pupils of the 21st Century are at much greater risk than they have ever been. The introduction of technology and social media, and the interaction between cultures has brought pupils closer together than ever before. In order for a school to protect their students is to engage and educate their students around the signs and dangers of radicalisation and extremism particularly when using technology and social media.

One recent method that schools have been adopting to help protect their school pupils is to provide a communication channel to allow pupils to report any incidents of extremism that they themselves may be susceptible to. However a number of schools that have used a communication method have found that it has been most powerful allowing pupils to report and raise concerns for their friends or family members directly to their school. Proactive schools have found that tackling these new issues head on by engaging the wider community to educate have also proven to be an excellent starting point.

This new safeguarding issue within schools is unfortunately one that is going to increase if schools do not put the relevant communication, reporting and action policies in place.

Michael is the founder of Tootoot, the safeguarding application which allows pupils to report incidents such as extremism as well as bullying, racism etc. Find out more.

E-safety and Cyberbullying in school - Don’t just rely on face-to-face reporting

Have you ever wanted to be able to report a worry, bullying or other incidents such as sexism or racism directly to your school but you don’t know who to tell, or if you do, you find that your teachers tell you to report it to them or to someone face-to-face?

That’s all well and good if you are confident and feel able to speak up to somebody about everything that is happening to you. But what happens if you're not one of these confident people? What happens if you’re too scared to tell someone face-to-face? What happens if you finally build up the confidence to speak to a teacher, but your bully is standing across the playground, glaring at you? What happens if you are in your room on a Sunday night, too frightened to go to school tomorrow, knowing that before you even see a teacher, your bully will be harassing you on social media or waiting for you at the school gates?

These are just some of the questions that race through school children’s minds of all ages across the UK on a daily basis. The government states that 39% of children don’t know who, where or how to report incidents other than through face-to-face directly to their school! As a result of this, every single day, 16,000 children across the UK skip school because they are unable to report and resolve issues or worries within their school environment.

Too many schools rely on old-fashioned face-to-face methods as a channel for their students - no matter what their age - to report worries, bullying, and safeguarding issues! These issues are only going to grow and develop further unless alternative methods are used within the school environment to encourage school children to speak up. New forms of technology and social media are forever closing the gap between victims and aggressor’s through the form of cyber-bullying. Therefore modern schools and modern societies need to adopt a modern approach to allow children to report incidents and worries such as bullying, as well as problems at home that may be effecting their school lives. Tootoot’s recent research found that; providing 10,000 students with an alternative technological method allowing them to report worries - resulting in a 49% uptake - increased reporting by 6 times compared with that of face-to-face reporting.

I was bullied as a young boy and wanted to help other students to not suffer in silence. I developed tootoot to provide vulnerable students with a voice to report incidents of bullying and other safeguarding worries directly to their school. Find out more.