Hawick High School’s News team shares their tootoot story.

Bullying. This issue has been tackled many times but continues to remain a worry for many school children and young adults. Events such as anti-bullying month between the 2nd and 27th of November aim to raise awareness of the problem and provide people with the information about the effects of bullying and how we can confront this issue. At school everybody learns about what to do if you are ever bullied or ever see anybody being bullied however there are still many young people who may be too scared or not confident enough to confide in somebody about it.

Being bullied can damage both a young person’s physical and mental health. Good mental health and wellbeing is critical to good learning and Hawick high school is working towards having the status of a “Mentally Flourishing School”. This means that being bullied can cause a decline in academic progress, anxiety in social situations and a lack of self confidence if those being affected feel they can not speak to somebody who can help them.

Hawick High School are introducing a new way to support the pupils who feel they are isolated and unable to appeal for help. The School are going to present students with a new anti-bullying app called Tootoot, it will allow pupils to anonymously explain their problem to a teacher without the fear of being identified and perhaps making the matter worse. The app is also incredibly useful for staff as it means that they can record any disturbing incidents that they witness. They are able to log events such as a fight in the playground, if they observe discrimination or if they have concerns about a pupil. Also due to a great deal of cyber bullying taking place these days the app allows the user to take screenshots and then send them through the app.

Mr Fobister, one of the teachers in charge of launching the app, and Hawick High News took this opportunity to ask him about how the School are planning to use this application.

Tootoot will be accessible at any time, anywhere and when a member of staff or a student reports their worries an email will automatically be sent to a member of the pastoral staff. Students will be able to access Tootoot on a laptop, phone or tablet either using the website or they can download the app onto their device.

Thank you to the Hawick High School News team for sharing their story with us. If you would like to share your tootoot launch story please email info@tootoot.co.uk