Safeguarding, Technology and Education

The latest version of “Keeping Children Safe in Education” came into force on 1 September 2023

Read about how some web filtering companies are using scare tactics with schools to secure sales …

Compliant, Effective Safeguarding Solutions from Blue Planet IT

“Governing bodies and proprietors should be doing all that they reasonably can to limit children’s exposure to the above risks from the school or colleges IT system. As part of this process governing bodies and proprietors should ensure their school has appropriate filters and monitoring systems in place.” – Keeping Children Safe in Education 2016

Blue Planet IT has worked with Ofsted Graded Schools that are Outstanding to develop a pro-active and effective solution to safeguarding that is built around the latest guidance issues in September 2016.

Can your existing filtering be made compliant?

We offer a free Safeguarding technology audit where we will look at your existing systems and see if they could be adapted to help you comply with the new guidance on Safeguarding.

How to be compliant

Our solution focuses on the 3 areas of identified risk; content, contact and conduct with a set of tools that alerts you to a safeguarding issue that is happening right now at the school and historical safeguarding specific reporting. The reporting and graphical dashboards help your identify patterns of behavior, this information then can be used in the training and development of your staff and built into the e-safety elements of the curriculum for students.

It’s not just about technology

A compliant web filtering and monitoring solution is only part of the compliance, if you need assistance with internal processes that work with the technology then we can partner with existing schools to help you through the whole process.

What do we filter?

The filtering we use is processed using classification software and human inspection techniques to categorize and maintain definitions of more than 95 URL categories in more than 50 languages, this has been adapted specifically to UK Safeguarding guidance.

Content	Explanatory notes
Discrimination	Promotes the unjust or prejudicial treatment of people on the grounds of race, religion, age, or sex.
Drugs/Substance abuse	Drugs / Substance abuse displays or promotes the illegal use of drugs or substances
Extremism	promotes terrorism and terrorist ideologies, violence or intolerance
Malware/Hacking	Malware / Hacking promotes the compromising of systems including anonymous browsing and other filter bypass tools as well as sites hosting malicious content
Pornography	displays sexual acts or explicit images
Piracy and copyright theft	includes illegal provision of copyrighted material
Self-Harm	promotes or displays deliberate self-harm (including suicide and eating disorders)
Violence	Violence Displays or promotes the use of physical force intended to hurt or kill

How do we manage unsafe contact?

By blocking access to forums, chatrooms and applications that run on PC and Mobile devices we can monitor and limit access to technology that allows potentially unsafe contact with individuals.

How can we help you manage conduct?

There are two aspects of our Safeguarding product to help manage the conduct of your users; historical reporting and realtime alerts.

Historical Reporting

To the right is an example of just one of the Safeguard reports from our filtering solution showing categories that have been blocked, from here we can drill down to the specific user and time. Using the suite of reports that specifically target Safeguarding issues on your network you are able to analyse the behaviour and patterns of your users to address issues and shape your e-safety policy and on-going education.

Rather than just using static reports we have harnessed the power of Business Intelligence to allow you to interrogate the data, drill down and really understand the usage of IT in your school.

Real-Time Monitoring

We configure the firewall and web filter with Safeguarding specific rules that when triggered will email within seconds to an individual or group that you have a potential safeguarding issue in progress within the school allowing you to act promptly.

Find out more

If you would like us to audit your current systems, advise on improving your compliance or see our solution in action then please contact us for more information. Our solution is built on industry leading technolgies and partners to provide you peace of mind and transparency on this key area of compliance for education.

Speak to an IT Safeguarding Consultant on 01295 533977.