Small Primary Filtering

[dave.81]

This year we took over a local prep school and slowly turning the IT around to something that actually works. As shocking as this maybe they currently have no web filtering at all!

 

I know all the main players in this having used most over the years, currently we use iBoss, but from experience they are all going to be cost prohibitive for what is a school of 50ish students and 20 teachers. What options would you suggest for a school of this size??

 

Thanks.

[ellsandell]

See if the ISP provides anything?

[synaesthesia]

A lot of filtering providers license per machine and/or per user depending on what's most cost effective so it'll be worth asking the likes of Lightspeed and Smoothwall.

[ReBoot]

You could look at Web Filtering & Parental Controls for Schools & Families - Securly who provide a cloud based filtering solution. Cost is reasonable for a small school (around £500 annually) and setup is straightforward requiring only changes to dns and installation of Securly's SSL certificates. Performs SSL intercept and per user reporting based on Google Apps accounts.

 

Integrates with Google Apps so helps if you are already using this.

[Net-Ctrl]

Hello,

 

We have just taken on a solution that may be what you're after. The Web Filtering is based on iBoss and will be delivered over any Internet connection

 

I think the pricing is around the £4.50 per user/per year and an initial set-up cost of £250.

 

It includes: -

- Provision of Pupils, Staff and Teacher groups and policies

- AD sync for single sign on and multiple AD group based polices and reports eg YouTube can be accessed by Teachers but not by Pupils.

- Access to Management GUI – link and password provided for either school to use or Net Ctrl or eSafety4schools as part of the Managed service.

- User documentation

- Comprehensive reporting

- Adherence to the governments PREVENT strategy

- Own school allow/deny list

- Customisable deny page to incorporate the school’s logo, motif and AUP

- Embedded web threat scanning capabilities, capable of identifying and blocking zero-hour and known web-borne viruses, spyware, malware and other forms of malicious code

 

We are able get free evaluations for you to try the solution.

 

As it is new to our portfolio, i don't know much more than that. However, if it sounds like it could of interest, send me a PM and I will get one of the team that knows much more than I to get in touch.

[SchoolsBroadband]

This year we took over a local prep school and slowly turning the IT around to something that actually works. As shocking as this maybe they currently have no web filtering at all!

 

I know all the main players in this having used most over the years, currently we use iBoss, but from experience they are all going to be cost prohibitive for what is a school of 50ish students and 20 teachers. What options would you suggest for a school of this size??

 

Thanks.

 

Hello,

 

we are all in with Lightspeed filtering, FTTC broadband, phone line, email, web hosting etc etc with no per user filtering from £2,600pa which should be all you need for a small primary school. If this school is part of a bigger MAT we can also link all your school sites together over an MPLS / VPLS WAN at not extra cost.

 

I'll send you over a PM.

 

You could also check out opendns which does filtering FOC. Not recommended as there is no reporting but if you want cheap and free then you could use that.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Wave9_Lee]

PM'd cheers, Lee

[AlanD]

Note - the other posts here. Filtering is NOT sufficient any more. You MUST monitor. If you just want to filter - using PFsense as a gateway - will do it for free. Use a draytek router and add their filter (used in many German schools) for £50 a year (which is a DNS type of filter). There seems to be the general opinion that those that deliver ICT in schools will get questioned by Ofsted - and will be expected to show monitoring - for example getting warnings of trigger words being used by identifiable individuals in a google search.

[synaesthesia]

Please don't confuse terms like that because it sounds more like scaremongering. Monitoring primarily comes from active supervision, which should be occurring anyway, typically as classroom control. The required standard of monitoring (unless I'm mistaken, please correct me if wrong) is nothing more than the receipt of weekly or more frequent reports from filtering solutions, something they're all capable of.

I should hope that the majority of people running filtering check their reports for search & internet results as common sense; what good is filtering if the (hopefully very wrong) assumption is it's never checked and it's purely there to block traffic.