Internet Connection To Pupil Premium Home's - Connection & Filtering

[nickalmond]

Hello. I am hoping someone may be able to offer a bit of advice.

 

We are currently in a position where we are purchasing 8 laptops for some of our pupil premium students for use at home; however, the majority of these students also do not have an internet connection. We are currently purchasing mobile broadband adapters for these situations but I have two problems with this;

 

1) I am anticipating the internet usage each month will be approximately 5-6GB (if used solely for work purposes). We are currently purchasing 12GB Three Mobile broadband adapters at approximately £70 a piece. This is going to get very costly over the course of the year to cover all 8 students.

2) We cannot offer any form of filtering for these students other than the standard 'under 18' filtering of the adapter.

 

We have discussed the option of simply paying for a home connection through the likes of BT but again, have run into a possible issue; the school doesn't have a debit card and therefore cannot set up a direct debit to pay for these connections. The alternative would be to ask the parents to pay for the connect and they will be reimbursed but I don't see this as a great option given the situation and would potentially cause issues with money exchanging hands.

 

I have contacted our ISP (ExaNetwork) to see if they offer residential installs but unfortunately they don't - this would have been ideal as they also offer basic filtering.

 

Ideally, what we are looking is a home internet connection either with filtering through the ISP or some software / setup which will allow us to remotely manage filtering policies which allows us to pay using BACS or make annual payments for the service (I believe it may be possible to set up direct debits using BACS but most companies appear to require card details which I don't believe this has).

 

I have come across Web Filtering & Parental Controls for Schools & Families - Securly which may help with the filtering side - I still need to read a little more about how this works but a a semi locked down laptop with this service may do the trick.

 

If anyone has been in a similar situation and can offer any advice, it would be greatly appreciate.

 

Thank you!

Nick

[psydii]

Most (all?) home broadband packages come with filtering at the network level, and a really simple UI.

 

If the devices are school owned, then perhaps smoothwall or sophos have solutions: Smoothwall Secure Web Gateway: Manage Internet Access & Protect users "Mobile Filtering clients for Windows, OSX and iOS"

 

There probably is a credit card somewhere that can be used for the ISP sign-up. If not, talk to the head, and may they can arrange to get one to be used to support the PP students.

[SchoolsBroadband]

We do this on home broadband connections no problem with Lightspeed filtering.

 

Pm me if interested.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[HPlum78]

All kinds of tax implications paying for home BB, also Telcos get a bit jumpy when you ask them to install services to buildings that you don't have any association with in my experience things may have changed on that front mind. 3G router with VPN, or direct access if you have it set up is a good way to get this working.

[Jamman960]

direct debit wise it should only require a bank account number and sort code rather than anything to do with a debit card, I've never had any issues with the school account, it just needs to be signed by both the head and bursar in our case.

[nickalmond]

Thank you very much to everyone who has replied. I am not entirely sure yet how we are going to proceed with this but I will be giving Schools Broadband a call next week to further discuss both LightSpeed and broadband.

 

Thank you again - hope everyone has a great weekend!

Nick

[EXA_Mark]

Hello. I am hoping someone may be able to offer a bit of advice.

 

We are currently in a position where we are purchasing 8 laptops for some of our pupil premium students for use at home; however, the majority of these students also do not have an internet connection. We are currently purchasing mobile broadband adapters for these situations but I have two problems with this;

 

1) I am anticipating the internet usage each month will be approximately 5-6GB (if used solely for work purposes). We are currently purchasing 12GB Three Mobile broadband adapters at approximately £70 a piece. This is going to get very costly over the course of the year to cover all 8 students.

2) We cannot offer any form of filtering for these students other than the standard 'under 18' filtering of the adapter.

 

We have discussed the option of simply paying for a home connection through the likes of BT but again, have run into a possible issue; the school doesn't have a debit card and therefore cannot set up a direct debit to pay for these connections. The alternative would be to ask the parents to pay for the connect and they will be reimbursed but I don't see this as a great option given the situation and would potentially cause issues with money exchanging hands.

 

I have contacted our ISP (ExaNetwork) to see if they offer residential installs but unfortunately they don't - this would have been ideal as they also offer basic filtering.

 

Ideally, what we are looking is a home internet connection either with filtering through the ISP or some software / setup which will allow us to remotely manage filtering policies which allows us to pay using BACS or make annual payments for the service (I believe it may be possible to set up direct debits using BACS but most companies appear to require card details which I don't believe this has).

 

I have come across Web Filtering & Parental Controls for Schools & Families - Securly which may help with the filtering side - I still need to read a little more about how this works but a a semi locked down laptop with this service may do the trick.

 

If anyone has been in a similar situation and can offer any advice, it would be greatly appreciate.

 

Thank you!

Nick

 

Hi Nick,

 

Damon who you spoke to last week is going to give you a call today, if that is okay as there has been some confusion on this. Whilst he is quite correct in saying we do not sell to the residential market, we do provide already connectivity to pupils at home on services such as Lift Off, Referral units or Outreach for a number of schools and local authorities, including, of course our content filtering.

 

Hope this clarifies things at least a little.