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Filtering & Monitoring
Coombe Academy Trust is committed to making sure that children understand how to keep themselves safe online and this is taught through assemblies, active tutorials and PSHE lessons. Our Computing Departments also have an extensive Online Safety and Digital Citizenship curriculum which teaches our pupils how to stay safe when online.
The network at all of our Trust schools is managed, maintained and secured in-house by the Coombe IT Services Team, and internet security, including firewalls and filtering, is provided by London Grid for Learning.
We have a monitoring system in use across all school’s devices, including our students' 1:1 Chromebooks when used in school and at home, from Netsupport classroom.cloud. This system Our Computing Departments have an extensive Online Safety and Digital Citizenship curriculum, starting in Year 7 for students, which teaches our pupils how to stay safe online.
This system enables us to protect students online by logging keywords triggered on student devices and capturing screenshots/recordings when matched phrases are typed/viewed against set word lists, including those from the following categories: adult content, bullying, grooming, and self-harm/suicide.
The safeguarding team at each school receives notifications of any students who trigger alerts when finding, using or attempting to access proxy sites or bypass the web filtering restrictions in place, or when accessing inappropriate or suspicious websites. This system is not a crisis line for students who may be facing difficulties and this has been made clear to all our students. If children have any concerns or worries they should talk to a trusted adult.
At Coombe Academy Trust, we want to make sure that all parents/carers understand the role we have in monitoring our students' Chromebooks. As your child's Chromebook is an educational device, we monitor online usage from 8:30 am to 4:30pm during school days. We will not monitor the device after these hours and at weekends, or during school holidays.
We also have a filtering system in place that ensures all internet traffic at school and on devices taken off-site by students is filtered using the LGfL's platforms, SchoolProtect and HomeProtect. While social media is blocked when in school, HomeProtect will allow this and sites such as YouTube when at home. This is classified as appropriate filtering by the UK Safer Internet Centre, and follows the Filtering and Monitoring Standards published by the Department for Education.
Please note that Chromebooks do not have software installed that can restrict access to specified websites that parents/carers can control when at home as this would impact on access to sites when in school. We therefore advise families that these settings are instead set on their internet at home.
At school, we prevent access to inappropriate websites through our filtering systems on the IT network. Therefore, if students connect their Chromebooks to the internet using their phones as hotspots in school, they could bypass our filtering system in place, and instead browse the internet unrestricted, using the settings in place on their own device. This would be a breach of our Acceptable IT Usage Policy. This would also be the case at home if your child was to use their mobile data to bypass and parental settings that you had put in place on your home wifi.
Advice to parents/carers on parental controls set at home and restricting internet access
It is important that parents/carers make sure that they set parental controls or restrictions on their home internet and/or child’s mobile phone internet access settings, so that young people are not able to access inappropriate websites and content when browsing online. These settings often come included as part of your broadband package, and mobile data settings can be set on the phone itself or by contacting the network operator.
Guides on how to access these settings to put restrictions and controls in place can be found below. However, this list is not exhaustive and if your internet provider is not listed, a search for ‘parental controls’ should find the link you need to access this information:
The local authority expert on online safety spoke to Coombe Parents in 2023 and gave some excellent advice on how to protect your child online. The first part of the presentation is about keeping their internet access secure and protecting their devices. The second part is about giving them skills and resources to protect themselves. The presentation and links can be found here: https://cbswellbeing.coombe.org.uk/parentscarers/online-safety.
Due to the restrictions in place on our 1:1 Chromebooks, students/parents cannot install any unapproved apps or extensions from the Chrome Web Store or Google Play, and Chromebooks aren't susceptible to viruses or malware.
We do, however, recommend that you turn on child-safe filters provided by your ISP (internet service provider, such as Virgin Media or BT) and set sensible rules for electronic device usage at home. For example, your child's Chromebook, along with their mobile phone, should be switched off after 9pm and shouldn't be taken to or kept in their bedroom.
We recommend the following resources for parents and carers:
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact your child’s safeguarding team at their school, details of which can be found on the school websites.
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