Britannica School
How to use Britannica school for safe searching.
Overview
Britannica School gives schools access to high quality:
- reliable digital articles
- biographies
- images
- videos
- interactive content
Through Hwb, all maintained schools in Wales have access to Britannica School.
Practitioners and school leaders can explore Britannia School resources and Hwb DigiFest recordings for step-by-step support and practical implementation.
Britannica School provides content at different reading levels:
- Foundation: recommended for ages 8 to 11
- Intermediate: recommended for ages 11 to 14
- Advanced: recommended for ages 14 to 18 and over
How to access Britannica Education in Hwb
There are 2 ways to access Britannica Education:
- Log into the Hwb website and click the Britannica Education app on the Hwb dashboard. This page gives learners and practitioners access to Britannica School and Britannica ImageQuest.
- Search directly for content from Britannica School and Britannica ImageQuest in the Resources area on Hwb.
Language settings
The Britannica School homepages are currently only available in English. When you are in an article, click the translate button to choose the language of your choice.
How Britannica School can support schools
- Provides high quality digital content about a wide range of common themes and topics to enhance teaching and learning across the Curriculum for Wales.
- Develops learners’ research, fact checking and critical thinking skills.
- Provides access to additional sources of trusted content such as journals, eBooks, news and other primary sources.
- Provides a safe, filtered environment for online research.
- Enhances accessibility through features like Read Aloud, adjustable reading levels and visual supports.
- Helps develop digital literacy through built in citation tools and structured information sources.
- Includes tools for setting research tasks and assignments into Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams directly within the platform.
Key considerations
- Ensure that the use of Britannicia School aligns with wider school policies such as safeguarding, digital literacy, online safety, acceptable use and data protection.
- Whilst using Britannica School, searches can currently only be carried out in English.
- Britannica School includes accessibility features to support all learners. These include a 'Read Aloud' tool that narrates articles and an 'OpenDyslexic' font option. This has been designed to improve readability for learners with dyslexia. The Read Aloud feature is not currently reliable for Welsh language content.
- When viewing an article, image, video, journal and so on, selecting the 'Save' option prompts the user to create a personal account. Practitioners can use their Hwb email address to set this up. Learners can create an account without providing an email address.
- If a learner forgets their login details, a practitioner must contact Britannica to request a password reset.
Data assurances
Schools should consider if:
- a new Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is needed
- their current DPIA should be updated
Britannica Education does not utilise or store personal information or learner data.
Each user’s interaction with Britannica is independent and private. For information about Britannica’s compliance with data privacy laws and regulations, please refer to Britannica Education Privacy Policy Notice. This includes those related to learner data.
Britannica Education does not use learner data for targeted advertising or marketing, and data is not sold to third parties.
Britannica Education can integrate with tools such as Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom. Schools should ensure they understand how learner data is handled in these integrations.