Press Release Story
Ofsted state in their 'Inspecting E-safety in Schools' briefing document that staff training is consistently the weakest area of a schools online safety provision. It goes on to recommend that all staff should receive up-to-date training to reflect current research and advances in technology.
The need for both a structured e-safety curriculum supported by teaching staff who understand not only the risks to young people, but also their responsibilities in the digital environment was highlighted by a recent comment from a concerned parent. Following the posting of a pupil’s name on YouTube by a teacher, the parent commented “My 10 year old is confused, as her teachers are doing exactly what they are teaching children not to do ie give away personal details online”.
But training all staff is no small task. Firstly there is the amount of time involved for both the individuals and also the schools nominated e-safety co-ordinator and secondly, there is the financial implication.
The obvious answer is online training, but with individual training courses costing upwards of £15 per teacher, the investment could easily take over a schools budget. For the average secondary school, online e-safety training for all staff would cost in the region of £1,100, with primary schools having to find £330 for this training alone.
In response to this issue, Kodo Education, publishers of the schools website www.e-safetysupport.com, have developed a series of online training courses for both school staff and also parents. Ian Pringle, CEO of Kodo Education commented “During our research, we spoke to a number of school leadership teams and found that the requirement to train all the staff was seen as somewhat of a challenge. We understood the frustration they faced, with having to find budget and resources to fulfill their obligations.”
The simple to distribute and monitor online training modules from E-safety Support are an easy and cost effective way to make sure all school staff, and parents, are given regular training. There are three training modules currently available: E-safety for Teachers - Annual Training, Social Media for Teachers – Annual Refresher and E-safety Training for Parents. The accompanying distribution tool allows the e-safety co-ordinator to dispatch the training via email and also monitor progress from a simple dashboard. Crucially, the training is not restricted by numbers – it can be completed by as many staff or parents as required, as many times as necessary.
“The resources provided by e-safetysupport.com have proved invaluable for both training staff and for the implementation of our new programme of study.” – David Russell, Head of Secondary
“I chose to subscribe to E-Safety Support because the materials were comprehensive but simple to understand. As a busy head teacher, it has saved me an immense amount of time.” - Sheila Greenacre, Head Teacher
Ian added “We are delighted to be able to make these training courses more financially accessible to schools and help schools provide solid evidence to Ofsted about their e-safety provision without having to add to their already extensive workload.”
Full previews of the online training modules are available to users who register for Free E-safety Support membership.
To find out more visit www.e-safetysupport.com/tour
