Contents
Overview
Since the onset of schools having access to the internet, there have been requirements to ensure that this is filtered to prevent harmful or inappropriate content being accessed.
Tragically, in 2018, a 15-year-old girl took her own life after an “enormous and systemic failure” by her special needs school left her with unfiltered access to online materials about suicide, a coroner concluded. The student took steps to end her life at home in September 2018, after earlier the same day reading a story on an iPad provided by her school in which a character died by suicide. The inquest heard that the tablet computer had no internet filter software installed to prevent users from accessing unsuitable content, and that Frankie had been accessing suicide-related material for months.
Since March 2022, the DfE have issued a set of required standards that schools and colleges are expected to meet. These standards were updated in 2023 and are also referenced within KCSiE.
What is filtering?
Schools in England and Wales are required “to ensure children are safe from harmful and inappropriate content including terrorist and extremist material when accessing the internet in school, including by establishing appropriate levels of filtering”.
Furthermore, the Department for Education’s statutory guidance ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ obliges schools and colleges in England to “ensure appropriate filters and appropriate monitoring systems are in place and regularly review their effectiveness” and they “should be doing all that they reasonably can to limit children’s exposure to the above risks from the school’s or college’s IT system” however, schools will need to “be careful that “over blocking” does not lead to unreasonable restrictions as to what children can be taught with regards to online teaching and safeguarding.”
What is monitoring?
Filtering and monitoring are often grouped as the same thing however they’re two separate yet complementary services. Monitoring relates to the review of user activity on your school network to promote the safeguarding of your students and staff. Keeping Children Safe in Education Guidance suggests finding what is ‘appropriate’ for your school. This can be a software that monitors everything and sends you the data to review, a managed service that flags and alerts you to specific concerns or it could be a person physically watching students during lessons.
What is expected of schools?
Schools and colleges should provide a safe environment to learn and work, including when online. Filtering and monitoring are both important parts of safeguarding pupils and staff from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material.
Clear roles, responsibilities and strategies are vital for delivering and maintaining effective filtering and monitoring systems. It’s important that the right people are working together and using their professional expertise to make informed decisions.
Governing bodies and proprietors have overall strategic responsibility for filtering and monitoring and need assurance that the standards are being met.
To do this, they should identify and assign a member of the senior leadership team and a governor, to be responsible for ensuring these standards are met by
the roles and responsibilities of staff and third parties, for example, external service providers. There may not be full-time staff for each of these roles and responsibility may lie as part of a wider role within the school, college, or trust. However, it must be clear who is responsible, and it must be possible to make prompt changes to your provision.
Leader’s roles
The senior leadership team are responsible for procuring filtering and monitoring systems alongside
documenting decisions on what is blocked or allowed and reviewing the effectiveness of your provision and overseeing reports. They are also responsible for making sure that all staff understand their role and
are appropriately trained to follow policies, processes and procedures and act on reports and concerns. Senior leaders should work closely with governors or proprietors and the designated safeguarding lead (DSL) and IT service providers in all aspects of filtering and monitoring. Your IT service provider may be a staff technician or an external service provider. Day to day management of filtering and monitoring systems requires the specialist knowledge of both safeguarding and IT staff to be effective. The DSL should work closely together with IT service providers to meet the needs of your setting. You may need to ask filtering or monitoring providers for system specific training and support.
Role of the DSL
The DSL should take lead responsibility for safeguarding and online safety, which could include overseeing and acting on:
- filtering and monitoring reports
- safeguarding concerns
- checks to filtering and monitoring systems
The IT service provider should have technical responsibility for:
- maintaining filtering and monitoring systems
- providing filtering and monitoring reports
- completing actions following concerns or checks to systems.
The IT service provider should work with the senior leadership team and DSL to:
- procure systems
- identify risk
- carry out reviews
- carry out checks
Achieving the standards
There are 4 key areas to be met under the following headings:
- Assign roles and responsibilities.
- Reviewing filtering and monitoring provision at least annually
- How your filtering blocks content without blocking content that is reasonably expected due to the curriculum and teaching and learning.
- Have effective monitoring strategies to meet the needs of your setting and learners.
Each standard has a described number of requirements to enable leaders and governors to meet each.
Where can schools seek support?
Schools should work with their accredited Internet Service Provider (ISP) to ensure that the filtering is both active, but also providing suitable reporting.
SWGfL offer a wide range of tools, advice, resources and training to support schools in meeting the standards. As an organization, they are instrumental in working with the DfE and wider partners in the area of online safeguarding. The following webinars, offer focused short films produced by SWGfL to support leaders and governors to understand and fulfill the required standards.
Included within their resources is a tool to be able to test the school filtering system.
UK Safer Internet Center also offer a number of resources, guidance and links to support leaders further.
Working with parents and carers
In achieving the required standards, schools need to ensure that they communicate these to parents and the school community. Schools should also do all that they can to ensure parents and carers are provided with information and guidance to support their child at home when accessing the internet alongside the safe use of devices. This should include how we work together to ensure all children understand their role as a ‘digital citizen’ and how this includes an understanding to report harmful content, sharing of ‘nudes’, extremist, homophobic, racist or wider discrimination. In a rapidly evolving landscape, all stakeholders need to work together to keep children safe when online.
Parents and carers internet safety workshop (delivered in school)
Technology workshop – supporting parents and carers to help their child or children use the internet safely.
Find out more: https://devoneducationservices.co.uk/products/2523/technology-workshop