Schools in England (and Wales) are 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, 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.” Ofsted concluded as far back as 2010 that “Pupils in the schools that had ‘managed’ systems had better knowledge and understanding of how to stay safe than those in schools with ‘locked down’ systems. Pupils were more vulnerable overall when schools used locked down systems because they were not given enough opportunities to learn how to assess and manage risk for themselves.”

To further support schools and colleges in England to meet digital and technology standards, the Department for Education published Filtering and Monitoring Standards in March 2023. In addition to aspects of both filtering and monitoring systems, these standards detail the allocation of roles and responsibilities, and that schools and colleges should be checking their filtering and monitoring provision at least annually

Click here to view detailed information on our Filtering System