Today St Matthew’s RC Primary School in Walton officially launched the anti-bullying and safeguarding app tootoot education to their pupils for Safer Internet Day.

Tootoot education is an online anti-bullying and safeguarding platform and app that allows pupils to speak about any concerns or issues they have directly to their place of learning.

St. Matthew’s RC Primary already have an excellent anti-bullying system in place with eCadets and pupil mentors. The eCadets are a national programme; a group of pupils within a school who become trained online. The school also has a mentor scheme in which pupil’s volunteer to assist other children with bullying and friendship issues.

On Tuesday 6th February it’s Safer Internet Day 2018, Safer Internet Day is an annual event which promotes the safe and positive use of digital technology for children and young people. 2018’s slogan is “Create, Connect and Share Respect: A better internet starts with you”.

Coordinated by the UK Safer Internet Centre, hundreds of organisations, including tootoot, are helping promote the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people.

Tootoot will be sharing online resources for teachers including assembly plans, activities and fact sheets to help pupils explore the role they can play in helping to create a better and safer online community.

Tootoot co-founders Michael Brennan, 27, and Kieran Innes, 26, have been named on the 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list. Announced at a ceremony in London on Monday 22nd January, the co-founders were honoured for the work they have done taking the fight against bullying digital.

Together they built an app that allows pupils to anonymously report concerns such as bullying and harassment, whilst also providing a simple way for staff to manage and respond to the concerns.The idea for tootoot came from the relentless bullying tootoot CEO Michael Brennan experienced growing up. He found that support systems such as anti-bullying helplines eased his problems, but because they couldn’t feed back to his school his problems were never fully solved. He quickly realised that there was no digital solution that closed the feedback loop and allowed children to confidentially and discretely report their concerns, yet every child had access to a mobile device. It was during this time he joined forces with tootoot co-founder and CTO Kieran Innes who led on the development of the app.

The theme for Anti-Bullying Week 2017 is ‘All Different, All Equal’. The week aims to help children and young people celebrate what makes them unique, and to understand the importance of being themselves without fear of bullying.

Anti-Bullying Week shines a spotlight on bullying and encourages all children, teachers and parents to take action against bullying throughout the year.

Within the past year 1.5 million children and young people have been bullied.

Children and young people can be bullied for all manner of reasons from appearance and accents to gender and race. And although not their fault, it can still have

This year’s Pupil Voice Week theme is ‘it’s Your Voice’, we want children and young people to celebrate their diversity and individuality. Helping them to see what makes them unique.

As part of the Pupil Voice Week activities we’ve been asking you to share your voice and encourage others to do the same. We thought it would be a good opportunity for you to get to know some of the tootoot team, and for us to have some fun thinking about our voices and what makes us unique!