GovWire

The importance of the standard

For filtering and monitoring to be effective it should meet the needs of your pupils and staff, and reflect your specific use of technology while minimising potential harms.?

To understand and evaluate the changing needs and potential risks of your school or college, you should review your filtering and monitoring provision, at least annually.?

Additional checks to filtering and monitoring need to be informed by the review process so that governing bodies and proprietors have assurance that systems are working effectively and meeting safeguarding obligations.?

How to meet the standard

Governing bodies and proprietors have overall strategic responsibility for meeting this standard. They should make sure that filtering and monitoring provision is reviewed, which can be part of a wider online safety review, at least annually.?

The review should be conducted by members of the senior leadership team, the designated safeguarding lead (DSL), and the IT service provider and involve the responsible governor. The results of the online safety review should be recorded for reference and made available to those entitled to inspect that information.?

Your IT service provider may be a staff technician or an external service provider.

Technical requirements to meet the standard??

A review of filtering and monitoring should be carried out to identify your current provision, any gaps, and the specific needs of your pupils and staff.?

You need to understand:

• the risk profile of your pupils, including their age range, pupils with special educational needs and disability (SEND), pupils with English as an additional language (EAL)?
• what your filtering system currently blocks or allows and why
• any outside safeguarding influences, such as county lines
• any relevant safeguarding reports
• the digital resilience of your pupils
• teaching requirements, for example, your RHSE and PSHE curriculum?
• the specific use of your chosen technologies, including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
• what related safeguarding or technology policies you have in place
• what checks are currently taking place and how resulting actions are handled

To make your filtering and monitoring provision effective, your review should inform:

• related safeguarding or technology policies and procedures
• roles and responsibilities?
• training of staff?
• curriculum and learning opportunities?
• procurement decisions
• how often and what is checked
• monitoring strategies

The review should be done as a minimum annually, or when:??

• a safeguarding risk is identified?
• there is a change in working practice, like remote access or BYOD?
• new technology is introduced

There are templates and advice in the reviewing online safety section of Keeping children safe in education. ?

Checks to your filtering provision need to be completed and recorded as part of your filtering and monitoring review process. How often the checks take place should be based on your context, the risks highlighted in your filtering and monitoring review, and any other risk assessments. Checks should be undertaken from both a safeguarding and IT perspective.

When checking filtering and monitoring systems you should make sure that the system setup has not changed or been deactivated. The checks should include a range of:?

• school owned devices and services, including those used off site?
• geographical areas across the site??
• user groups, for example, teachers, pupils and guests?

You should keep a log of your checks so they can be reviewed. You should record:

• when the checks took place??
• who did the check?
• what they tested?or checked?
• resulting actions??

You should make sure that:

• all staff know how to report and record concerns?
• filtering and monitoring systems work on new devices and services before releasing them to staff and pupils?
• blocklists are reviewed and they can be modified in line with changes to safeguarding risks?

You can use South West Grid for Learnings (SWGfL) testing tool to check that your filtering system is blocking access to:?

• illegal child sexual abuse material?
• unlawful terrorist content
• adult content

When to meet the standard?

You should already be meeting this standard.?