Press Release Story
Leeds based company Kodo Education is celebrating a key achievement in its success as on online provider of e-safety training and education tools and resources for schools.
Founded in 2013, its specialist E-safety Support site has now seen over 80,000 training courses completed since its launch. The service fulfils a critical need in schools, following Ofsted’s findings that staff training is consistently the weakest area of a school’s online safety provision.
The E-safety Support site serves both primary and secondary schools and holds hundreds of e-safety resources. These include lesson plans, policy templates, guidance documents and support packs for teachers, governors, parents and students. It enables schools to deliver consistent, outstanding e-safety practice so they can be fully compliant with DfE requirements, which stipulate that all staff receive up-to-date training to reflect current research and advances in technology.
With over 14,000 members signed up to the site, company founder Kirsty Collinson is delighted by how well the service has been received by schools across the UK. However, she knows there is still a lot to be done to engage schools in making sure that staff skills and knowledge are kept updated. Only as recently as January this year, a survey held by Nerp (National Education Research Panel) found that on average, half of teachers do not have sufficient training to protect pupils from online radicalisation and exploitation at school.
Kirsty says “The results of the survey are really quite revealing, but the answer lies in training and our courses are an affordable way for schools to bridge that knowledge gap. The training materials and resources we provide are developed and written by some of the UK’s leading experts in e-safety and are continually being updated so they’re always in line with the latest requirements. They also provide school staff, parents and governors with the flexibility to take courses at a time that suits them, without them needing to take valuable hours out of the school day for on-site training.”
At a time when budgets are continually being squeezed, Kodo understands the importance of giving schools the best possible value, so their service is available for one annual subscription per school and not per user. “This means that everyone in the school can benefit from the full range of resources we provide”, added Kirsty. “For those who just want to see what’s available we also offer a free subscription, which gives a selection of guidance documents and e-safety tools at no cost.”
Over the last 4 years the company has continued to go from strength-to-strength, and now boasts clients and partners from across Europe, the Middle East, China, Africa and the USA, serving over 9,000 schools from across the globe. The team behind Kodo recently launched a new business, TrainingToolz.com that offers this successful training platform to third parties, allowing them to author their own online courses.
During the coming months, E-safety Support will see more resources added to the site including additional staff training courses and some brand new features to help teachers fit e-safety into their already busy schedule.
