Student Laptops, Home Internet and E-Safety

We have a small set of SEN Laptops issued, the main purpose being to aid in reading/writing etc.
We're being pushed by parents to allow students on the Internet at home with these units, but it's new territory for us. So I'm looking at the feasibility of it:

How do you cover ESafety/Duty of care when students use school computers with home Internet?

Can we get the parent to sign a disclaimer, combined with a revised AUP, would that be legally binding?

Have people invested in ESafety products before they've given Internet Access? I'm looking at small scale, can't really do Securus-style product at this stage due to a £0 budget for it.

We had a set of school owned laptops which were allowed home with internet access. Parents signed a revised AUP however I don't know if it was legally binding. We only had one problem in 3 years when we discovered porn on one of the laptops. It was never clear who had downloaded the images; student, older siblings or her separated parents. Everyone blamed each other and we decided not to pursue this after consulting the police.

We have looked at Forensic software CyberSentinel - e-Safety and internet parental control software however you have to consider how intrusive this is and whether or not it is an invasion of privacy. If the students and parents were fully informed about how the software worked and signed to accept that you would probably be covered. There is however a cost involved in using software of this type.

You could always have a trial period and monitor yourself how the students behave with internet access at home. If they abuse it then go back to blocking internet access when the laptops are off site.

Hope this helps!

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Originally Posted by gill

We have looked at Forensic software CyberSentinel - e-Safety and internet parental control software however you have to consider how intrusive this is and whether or not it is an invasion of privacy.

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There should not be an expectation of privacy when using the school's equipment, so I reckon that as long as they know it is there, you're fine to use it.

We use K9 Web Protection - Free Internet Filtering and Parental Controls Software on everything that gets used for the internet outside of school.

We ran tests for a few months and check on random laptops every now and again and have had no major problems with it yet.

Thanks for your responses, i'll have a look at the k9 stuff. One quick question, it say 'free for home use', As it's a School owned unit, does it still qualify?
As for CyberSentinel, it looks like a good option, i'll have to get my reading cap on.

I've spoken with our child safety representative, he's comfortable with getting the parents to sign off the responsibility as they are legally responsible for the student outside of school.
Been trying to get hold of some advice from our LEA, hopefully that will shed some more light.

I contacted K9 about using their excellent software on Staff laptops for home use, and they replied saying that this isn't allowed under the Home Use license. Shame really

You could setup a web accessible proxy/filtering system and force the client though that, That way they have the same web connection that they would at school (which imho is reasonable since its school property they are using).

Does your LEA have a legal department or similar that you check with in regards to the binding of the revised user agreements?

k9 fails badly if there's a proxy in the way, also not that hard to get around if the rest of the system isn't locked down with software restriction policies