Filtering and Monitoring
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 [Content, Contact, Conduct, Contract] 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.”
Schools in England and Wales are also required “to ensure children are safe from terrorist and extremist material when accessing the internet in school, including by establishing appropriate levels of filtering”. Furthermore, it expects that they “assess the risk of [their] children being drawn into terrorism, including support for extremist ideas that are part of terrorist ideology”.
Content filtering works by applying specific parameters to content retrieved via the internet, restricting access to certain materials on websites, Apps, emails or other suspicious items. It can be a hardware or software solution and can often be part of a firewall setting.
Monitoring, combined with content filtering, alerts for any activities that need to be acted upon, but the information is also used to determine which sites and keywords need to be filtered out. For example, if a new craze appears, the monitoring and filtering system will help us know what associated terms the children are searching for, and what websites they are accessing.
Parents can be reassured that at Isham we employ the highest quality filtering and monitoring systems to mitigate the risks of our children's online safety. The school uses Securly, as its filtering system, employing a continuously updated series of keywords and watchwords to filter the content of the internet from any of the machines within the school system.
Securly is a web filter used in UK primary schools to help parents monitor their children's online activity at school and at home. It's designed to keep children safe online by blocking inappropriate content and identifying suspicious activity.
How does Securly work?
Children will be asked to explore an increasingly wide range of websites and digital content and will be required to use search engines to develop their skills as a digital citizen - using these systems of filtering and monitoring we feel secure in exploring the online world, giving us opportunities to learn about online risks as we progress through school.
Online Safety
Online Safety is an important part of keeping children safe at Isham. Online Safety is taught to all children, explaining and demonstrating how to stay safe and behave appropriately online.
Please remember to apply appropriate settings to children's devices when they are using the internet at home or on mobile devices. Please refer to advice and guidance to ensure children's devices are appropriately managed.
Children are aware of the potential dangers online and are educated on how to use the internet safely. Every child also signs an age-appropriate acceptable use policy so that we know they have read and understood our school's rules on staying safe.
We can only be successful in keeping children safe online if we work with parents to ensure the Online Safety message is consistent. It is important that parents speak to their children about how they can keep safe and behave appropriately online.
Here are some resources that parents may find useful:
https://www.internetmatters.org/schools-esafety/parent-online-support-pack-teachers/