Why Five, Not Fifteen:

Guest Authors: Steve Shepherd and Samantha Meghawry

We mentioned it briefly in our first piece, so it's worth pausing on properly. Ofcom's 2026 research found that although more than 8 in 10 children (85%) recalled having had at least one lesson about online safety at school, fewer than 1 in 4 (23%) said they got them regularly. Most of the education that does exist arrives once children are already carrying phones, already on social platforms, already forming the habits it's meant to shape.

Anyone working in cyber security will recognise the pattern, and the fix. It's the same argument behind shifting security left in a development pipeline: catch the problem while it's cheap to fix, not after it's shipped. Waiting until secondary school to talk properly about online safety is the equivalent of testing for vulnerabilities after release. Technically still useful. Considerably harder, and considerably later than it needed to be.

That's why D.O.G. - Dedicated Online Guardians is built for Key Stage 1, rather than adapted down from something written for teenagers. It's story-led rather than lecture-led, and delivered screen-free, on the basis that you shouldn't need a device in a child's hand to teach them how to think about one. Children this age are already online. The conversation should meet them there, not wait until the risks have grown alongside
them.

None of this replaces what schools do later. It simply means the foundation is already in place by the time the harder conversations arrive, rather than being built from nothing at secondary school, when the child in front of you has already made most of their own decisions about how they behave online.