?A DROITWICH school has continued its award-winning drive surrounding online safety with a range of events to mark international Safer Internet Day.

Westacre Middle School is currently a nationally-accredited ICT Mark school and Centre of Excellence for IT and hosted a week of activities to help youngsters in their school and across the town to think about ways to stay safe online.

As part of the build-up to Safer Internet Day itself, all of the school's pupil digital leaders (known as the Cyber Council) spent the day on a very special educational visit.

They went to the Sky Academy Studios at the Sky TV Headquarters in London for a tour of the facilities and were able to watch a live broadcast from the Sky Sports News studios.

Westacre's Cyber Council were also invited to use facilities at Sky to create their own news report about the impact of social media on young people.

The youngsters, aged 9-12, got to experience life in front of and behind the cameras as they operated cameras, recorded voice-overs and completely edited their own bulletin.

The film itself was shared with the school's 380 pupils during a whole school assembly and can be watched via the school's website.

The whole school assembly was the launch of a wide range of events at Westacre and involved the digital leaders sharing advice with their peers on ways to stay safe online, including the Stop, Block and Report strategy.

Events during the day itself included class debates, online quizzes and acting out dramas that linked to the day's motto of 'Create, Connect and Share Respect: A Better Internet Starts With You' with all of the school's classes, from Year 5 up to Year 7, thinking about the risks of life online.

To help share views of the children at Westacre, some of their digital leaders were involved in a takeover of the school's successful and popular Twitter account.

The team clearly reached a wider audience with over 6,000 impressions of their tweets recorded during the day.

Pupils from neighbouring schools Chawson, Dodderhill and Ombersley visited the middle school to work together to create their own reports about e-safety.

They worked with Westacre's Year 5 and Year 7 digital leaders, who shared tips following their experience in London and helped their visitors to use Westacre's iPads to create their own films to take back to their own schools.

Paul Barber, Westacre's deputy head and e-safety co-ordinator, said: "As a school, we are always looking at ways to highlight the benefits and dangers associated with technology and the internet.

"To be able to run so many events this week has created a buzz around school and helped to spread the important messages from Safer Internet Day.

"It is always a pleasure to welcome colleagues and students from other schools across the Droitwich pyramid and this week has only helped to strengthen that bond.

"Well done in particular the children in our Cyber Council team, who have worked incredibly hard and clearly had an impact both in and out of Westacre."