We are flying from the Twitter/X nest and heading for the bluer skies of Bluesky. Our new account there is already set up, ready to follow and we’ll start posting there imminently.
Our Twitter/X account will be closed down on the 1st of December. Thanks to all who have followed us there and whose content we have enjoyed.
Sadly, we feel that Twitter/X is no longer a suitable place for this school to have a presence. The lack of moderation and changes to the algorithms make it harder and harder to avoid being exposed to offensive content. In recent times, we have been directly subjected to trolling and abusive posts from accounts which oppose our values and beliefs. Blocking and reporting no longer seems to have any effect and some of the content appearing on our timeline is disturbing and not good for the wellbeing of our admins, who get this content popping up on their phones in work and in their own time. Our SLT and Digital Team, who are mostly on the ‘frontline’, have given this some consideration and feel that it is time to withdraw. We also noted that in our most recent parent surveys and audits of our Twitter followers that fewer than 5% of our current families engage with us there. It has, at times, been a useful source of news and information for us, but mostly it has become a means for us to alert our few followers to website posts and for us to ‘re-broadcast’ local community information, which we do by Facebook, text and the weekly round-up/bulletin anyway . We can continue to do this by these other means.
Bluesky claims to have stronger moderation and there is a well-established education network on there. It’s not as well developed as Twitter in terms of informative content; we’ll see how it goes, but if all else fails we know that our community makes most use of our website and Facebook feed and could ‘get by’ with those just fine.
We can be found on our new account: @parkdaleprimary.bsky.social and would love to see you there.