Filtering and Monitoring 

Parents can be reassured that at Woodland Community Primary School we employ the highest quality filtering and monitoring systems to mitigate the risks of our children's online safety. Woodland Community Primary school’s main internet router (Fortigate) is provided and maintained by a school ISP the ISP currently used is Network Connect. This device holds the configurations for your internet web filtering and handles the web traffic for your school. The web filtering is broken down into categories for example Drug Abuse, Gambling, Advertising and Games, which can be enabled/disabled depending on the school’s preference. By default categories that are disabled for a school environment would be categories such as Weapons, Explicit Violence, Alcohol. Categories can be enabled/disabled for staff or pupils. Configured for Woodland Community Primary School are three individual web filtering policies for staff, pupils and guests each tailored for the audience, with the ability to allow/block specific websites for each policy. Network Connect can make changes to the web filtering policies as can the EDIT, School Technical Team.

Web traffic is monitored by Network Connect and weekly reporting is provided. Alerts are also received immediately by phone call directly to the Headteacher for all concerning activity.

Woodland Community Primary School use Network Connect to run the ISP, we use the secure Connect package. Secure Connect is a cyber security management application hosted by Network Connect, which collects data from Fortigate Firewalls and protects users and networks connected to the internet. It provides school with the following:

Intelligent monitoring: gives real-time event logs with visibility into user activity that means we can identify malicious individuals and actions. It also provides School with content filtering technology which enables web traffic to be classified using customized categories.

Robust blocking: this provides us with the ability to block access to inappropriate, dangerous and malicious websites to maintain a safe and productive environment for children, staff and guests accessing the network.

Automated Alerts: Network connect immediately notifies account administrators as and when security breaches occur across the network. Alerts include severe breaches such as: accessing adult content or proxy avoidance sites, network intrusion attempts and suspected internal threats.

Detailed reporting: Reports are sent to school detailing usage across the network, which allows management to quickly analyze and document any inappropriate internet usage as well as identifying any network threats and inefficiencies.

All school devices used by pupils and staff are attached to the secure network this is done by the Edit team before devices are distributed for use.

As a school, we have made the decision to not routinely issue our school Wi-Fi details to guests, if a visitor requires use of the internet; it will be at the discretion of senior management.

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. Internet safety is a huge part of our school curriculum and we challenge children to think about the key themes of content, contact, conduct and contract which form the four main areas for online safety. We believe that this gives them the best preparation for digital citizenship of the future.

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.