Supporter love:
"Having witnessed first hand the discrepancies in language, acceptance and understanding of these issues through conversations with students around the UK, it's essential that we do more. This is a very important initiative. " – Adam Cunis, Crowdfunder supporter
"It is so vital for young people to have the knowledge and support they may not receive at home." – Tracey Ruck, Crowdfunder supporter
OUR NEW SAFEGUARDING PLATFORM
'Your Voice Matters' is an innovative surveying platform. It asks students questions about their experiences and beliefs in a thoughtful and interactive way. This allows it to accurately and succinctly map the safeguarding problems across student populations, so you can mitigate them with precision.
The survey questions vary from student to student, depending on their answers, so the platform gains as much valuable information in the shortest possible time.
We've worked with schools, colleges and universities for 6 years to strengthen PSHE. We often see general safeguarding policies implemented with limited impact because they don't target the specific problems students face. Our platform can change this. We put student experiences at the heart of safeguarding.
Our platform was developed in partnership with schools, students and the government’s innovation department, Innovate UK.
Find out more information and sign up below.
ABOUT THE PLATFORM
On this platform, students will complete an anonymous survey about their experiences, ideas, hopes and fears. A designated safeguarding lead will have access to our ‘teacher dashboard’, in which the results of the survey will update live and we will provide a summary with strategic suggestions.
This will allow educational institutions to track areas such as sexual harassment, homophobia, racism, inequalities and sexism with precision among your student population. The platform will reveal behavioural trends in relation to geography, gender and ages.
Schools, colleges and universities can then (1) update safeguarding strategies if needed, so the right support goes to students depending on the problems they face and (2) test the effectiveness of these strategies against the data our platform will collect annually.
For example, with the data collected, your PSHE lessons can focus on the right topics for the right year groups, so lessons effectively tackle knowledge gaps which may later cause dangerous behaviours if unchallenged.
We worked closely with tech experts, school leaders and academics to bring this to life.
This platform aims to ensure safeguarding strategies are effective, data-informed and always relevant to the ever-changing landscape of challenges students actually face. It also seeks to disrupt the dominant governance structure of sex education. Our platform gives students a voice so they can highlight what support they need, rather than senior leaders risking deciding in silo what lessons students should attend.
The questions asked through the survey align closely with Ofsted's safeguarding inspection criteria and the Government's PSHE curriculum, giving schools the power to respond to any concerns before being inspected.
This platform is more important now than ever, as the Higher Education Policy Institute found only 6% of university students feel “confident” navigating the reality of sex and relationships. Similarly, in 2023 the Women and Equalities Select Committee stated sex education is “under-supporting” students to navigate “dangerous” situations.
KEY FEATURES
Our anonymous survey asks students questions in an informative and interactive way. It's been designed to mimic popular messaging apps, to encourage students to speak up and talk to trusted adults about the topics it covers including period poverty and consent.
1) ENGAGING AND EMPOWERING SURVEY
2) LIVE UPDATED RESULTS
As soon as a student completes the survey, specified teachers can view the results live in the teacher dashboard. This area was designed to bring the responses to life, and to help teachers clearly identify any safeguarding challenges students face.
3) CLEAR SUMMARIES
Within the 'teacher dashboard', safeguarding leads access a summary of their school's results in one clear page. This page will show what's working well, what can be improved, and what additional steps the institution can take to strengthen safeguarding.
DATA
Any data collected through the site is fully encrypted and fully secured. We will never share any data specific to your institution with any third party. We may include data from a national perspective in our reports and research to highlight trends and challenges young people face, so we can find national solutions and support schemes for schools. Individual school results will never be shared and your school's name will not be included anywhere so your results will never be traced back to you. We are happy to sign NDAs to demonstrate our commitment to data protection.
CO-CREATED
We co-created and co-developed this platform with a diverse range of learners, teachers, senior leaders in colleges and schools, parents, and experts in technology, GDPR policy and security, to make sure it fully meets the needs of learners. This involved several workshops with such stakeholders to test the platform's design, usability, and effectiveness.
We also worked with leading edtech organisation PLMR to bring our platform to life. PLMR has supported some of the biggest educational institutions for decades. We are committed to continuing to work with PLMR to help us combat any potential technology problems and to continuously develop the platform so it's as impactful as possible.
PROUDLY FUNDED BY
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MORE INFORMATION
For more information, do not hesitate to contact us at info@sexedmatters.co.uk. We would love to answer your questions and welcome you to our scheme.