Schools keen to evaluate their pupils’ prowess in online-safety, inform policy and education at a school and macro level are invited to participate in LGfL DigiSafe and the NSPCC’s Pupil Online Safety Survey.

The survey is open to all schools across the UK from the 1-28th Feb and has been specifically launched ahead of Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 6th Feb. In 2015 this survey was taken by over 22,000 children.

Questions will cover the three Cs of Content, Contact and Conduct and will touch upon highly relevant topics including live streaming, gaming, viewing and sharing content, spending money and meeting people online.

Schools signing up will be able to access the results for their own school as well as the national statistics once the survey is completed, providing school leaders with a comparison and allowing teachers to identify the specific needs of their pupils.

The previous survey compiled by LGfL in February 2015 surveyed over 20,000 pupils and uncovered a number of findings, including statistics on how girls and boys spend their time online, the worrying number of underage pupils playing 18+ rated video games and the fact that only a minority of parents of key stage 2 pupils knew about all of their children’s online activity.

Mark Bentley, Online Safety and Safeguarding Manager at the LGfL, said: “This new survey will give us the opportunity to view the ways in which pupils online behaviour has changed over the past 2 years – an explosive 24 months for online safety. As well as contributing to a vital piece of academic research, schools taking part will be able to use the survey to tailor their own safeguarding lessons and teacher CPD.”

Tony Stower, Head of Child Safety Online at the NSPCC, said: “We are delighted to be working with LGfL on this latest project, which will provide vital information for schools and will help to inform the wide range of work we do to keep children safe online. We are encouraging as many schools as possible to participate and to incorporate completing the survey into their current online safety teaching.”

Schools can sign up to the online safety survey now by visiting pupilsurvey.lgfl.net.

Once signed up schools will receive a prefilled link to share with pupils once the survey goes live.