Filtering and Monitoring

Parents can be reassured that at Southroyd we employ the highest quality filtering and monitoring systems to mitigate the risks of our children's online safety. The school uses Watchguard, as its filtering system, employing a continuously updated series of keywords and watchwords to filter the content of the internet from any of the machines within the school system. Although no system is perfect, this has provided the highest quality of control on internet provision in school. 

All school devices, including Chromebooks which may be used for home learning, are part of the school's Senso Monitoring program. The system monitors keyboard entry and reports key words and watch words as they are typed on any child's keyboard. This provides real time and highly effective monitoring of all users on the school system. This should provide parents and carers with confidence that their children's experience of the online world is safe and backed up by a broad curriculum of online safety guidance.

Children will be asked to explore an increasingly wide range of websites and digital content and will be required to use search engines to develop their skills as a digital citizen - using these systems of filtering and monitoring we feel secure in exploring the online world, giving us opportunities to learn about online risks as we progress through school. Internet safety is a huge part of our school curriculum and we challenge children to think about the key themes of content, contact, conduct and contract which form the four main areas for online safety. We believe that this gives them the best preparation for digital citizenship of the future.

Please remember to apply appropriate settings to children's devices when they are using the internet at home or on mobile devices. Please refer to advice and guidance to ensure children's devices are appropriately managed.