Filtering and Monitoring Solutions for iPad in School

All schools in England are provided guidance from the government Department for Education on how they should meet digital standards for filtering and monitoring, accompanied by the statutory guidance on Keeping Children Safe in Education.

As an Apple Authorised Education Specialist, KRCS are here to help schools translate that guidance into real world solutions which provide an appropriate level of safeguarding for iPad in your school. The KCSiE guidance states that “The appropriateness of any filtering and monitoring systems are a matter for individual schools and colleges” so we can’t recommend a solution which will work for all schools, but we can certainly provide a comparison of the features that some of the industry leading solutions can provide to help leaders decide what will work for them as an integrated part of their schools overall safeguarding strategy beyond IT.

Compare Solutions

The comparison table below shows what’s possible on iPad using a ‘Good‘, ‘Better’, ‘Best’ and ‘Not Recommended’ methodology.

Good

‘Good’ being represented by the built-in tools that iPad provides, which although very technically capable are not suitable for schools because of the absence of any reporting.

Better

The ‘Better’ solution is Jamf Safe Internet. In our opinion this is the most capable prevention-only solution for iPad on the market today because of its use of the same technologies leveraged by Apple’s built in tools which protect content provided by any app on the device, not just the web browsers. Some leaders may decide that Jamf Safe Internet fits well with their other Safeguarding policies and is an appropriate solution for their school.

Best

The ‘Best’ solution is the combination of Securly’s Filter and Aware products, which together will allow schools to protect children against unsuitable and illegal online content, identifying who has been attempting to access that information and also providing assistance in identifying vulnerable children by monitoring their behaviour on iPad.

Not Recommended

‘Not Recommended’ is the last column which represents a typical generic filtering solution. These products require that Safari and all other web browsers are removed from iPad, replacing them with a custom web browser which links directly to a central filtering and monitoring platform. These solutions may seem like they provide an immediate solution for school leaders in fulfilling their obligations, but they have such a significantly negative impact on iPad as a transformative tool in the classroom that we would advise against their use when better solutions are available.

Get in Touch

If you’d like to discuss your school’s filtering and monitoring needs in more detail please contact our Education team or email edsales@krcs.co.uk. Our specialists are available to help you understand the obligations that leadership have in relation to iPad, and how best to fulfil them without negating the reasons why your school chose to invest in iPad to begin with.