Cyber Ambassador Scheme

The Cyber Ambassador Scheme is a free cyber safety education and support scheme for primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges.

The scheme follows a peer-led approach by skilling-up a small number of students in education settings on key online safety issues. These informed students then pass on their learning and offer helpful support to their peers promoting good digital citizenship and civility.

Peer-led: Written and delivered by young people for young people, harnessing the power of peer influence to enact positive change
Sustainable: Free and flexible for schools – a low cost way for schools to embed cyber safety education in their settings for years to come
Independent: Run by the public sector with industry partners, endorsed by the PCC, and informed by up-to-date police insights

More than 150 schools in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton are currently signed up to the scheme. This amounts to more than 15,000 students across all key stages having access to peer-led support and education, a figure that rises with every new school coming on board.

Critters

Key stage 2 students at primary school undertake the Critters programme. Each of the different characters represents specific online harms and risks. Learning covers exploring opportunities and risks of the internet; online relationships; health, wellbeing and lifestyle; privacy and security; managing online information; self-image and identity; online reputation; online bullying and online critical thinking.

Pathfinder

Key stage 3 and 4 secondary school and college students complete the Pathfinder programme. Pathfinder build students’ digital resilience, enabling them to understand when they are at risk online, know what to do to seek help, recover when things go wrong and learn from their experiences.

To find out more or sign up, please email the OPCC.

This scheme is only available for Hampshire and Isle of Wight, Portsmouth schools and youth organisations.

Industry collaborations

Continuing to grow in reach and recognition, the scheme is working in partnership with the University of Portsmouth Cyber Crime Clinic, Amazon Web Services, and the Cyber Hub Trust.

These collaborations will help to expand the scheme even further, bridging cyber safety and cyber security, and will provide Cyber Ambassadors with even more opportunities to increase their knowledge so that they can keep their peers safer online.

Skills and benefits

Teamwork and coordination
Planning, organising and presentation
Digital civility and citizenship
Resilience and self-regulation
Factual information and digital literacy
Empathy, compassion and positive mental health

Feedback from teachers

“We’ve had an incident today re social media and the training works – pupil was advised to block and report…they’d done it before we got told.”

“The cyber ambassadors are given a tool kit to help them stay safe online and to be able to sign post help where necessary reacting instantly to local trends. The scheme works because the ambassadors have credibility amongst their peers and they are able to provide realistic advice to parents.” (Heather Trim, Deputy Head at Portsmouth High).

Feedback from students

“I think it is a really interesting to be taught about e-safety by someone our age, we haven’t done this before. The sea creatures are really interesting and it is not boring as it does not have lots of stuff to read but also activities to do.”

“Today I have learnt a lot about being a Cyber Ambassador and I think that everyone should learn about it so you can know how to deal with the internet problems.”