Clyde Valley High School is a non-denominational secondary school catering to students aged 12 to 18, they currently have around 600 pupils enrolled.

“We launched tootoot in our school three months ago and have already had a case which has highlighted the benefits of the app.”

How did you launch tootoot at Clyde Valley High School?

We launched tootoot in our school three months ago and have already had a case which has highlighted the benefits of the app.

We take safeguarding very seriously at Clyde Valley High School, with regular classes and assemblies to enhance pupil welfare. In one of these assemblies we were discussing the issue of self-harm, its effects and how we as a school can help pupils that have ever been affected by it.

After the assembly we received an anonymous message from a pupil through tootoot, I was proud of how mature and rational the message was. It explained that the pupil had found the assembly useful, having suffered from self-harming in the past. The pupil said that even though the assembly was extremely useful, an image used in our presentation which depicted cutting had affected them. 

Having seen the image of cutting in the presentation, the pupil felt an urge to self-harm again, in the same way an alcoholic seeing alcohol, or a person with drug problems being around drugs may spark their addiction, they too felt a slight addictive-like urge to self-harm again and advised we remove the image.

Having received this message, we were able to immediately offer the pupil help, advice and support. Based on the pupil’s feedback we amended the presentation about self-harm for future assemblies and classes so other pupils won’t be affected.

“Tootoot gave this pupil the confidence to speak up about their worries, something that we don’t think would’ve happened otherwise.”

Tootoot gave this pupil the confidence to speak up about their worries, something that we don’t think would’ve happened otherwise. Because of tootoot we were able to offer the pupil help and guidance, and also remind ourselves to be careful when using images depicting self harm.

“Tootoot is unlike any other platform for attaining useful feedback like this, we’ve done anonymous surveys in the past with online surveys like Survey Monkey, but we found that with these surveys we weren’t able to then probe deeper.”

What would you say to someone on the fence about introducing tootoot?

Tootoot is unlike any other platform for attaining useful feedback like this, we’ve done anonymous surveys in the past with online surveys like Survey Monkey, but we found that with these surveys we weren’t able to then probe deeper and ask more questions. This is something we can now do with tootoot; delve further, ask questions, offer advice and support all in a confidential online conversation through the app.