Smoothwall is now working with 80% of schools in the region to safeguard their pupil’s online safety after winning a string of new contracts.
The company, has secured contracts with 10 out of 12 Local Education Authorities (LEA’s) in the region, and will now provide online protection to almost 80,000 pupils over the next five years across the Barnsley/Rotherham/East Riding/Kirklees/York areas. The cost works out at just £2.60 per pupil, per year – little more than the price of a school lunch.
Gavin Logan, Director of Public Sector Services at Leeds based Smoothwall, says: “We are serious about the education sector and have developed a product specifically for this market, which is why we have become the provider of choice, seeing off competition from 15 other UK and multi-national companies to win these new contracts.
“Our Guardian Web Filtering system isn’t just an off the shelf product built for the corporate environment that has been bent to fit the education sector, it utilises the best filtering technology in the world to provide real-time monitoring and filtering that examines the content, context and construction of every webpage rather than just blocking website’s URL addresses.”
Smoothwall’s Guardian technology, which has been designed in-house by some of the world’s leading IT developers, exceeds all standards dictated by the Department of Education’s benchmark accreditation as well as complying with the stringent US Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA.)
“The fact that our product surpasses all levels of security and safety outlined by the Government yet is still extremely easy to install and manage has made it the product of choice amongst the education sector's network and IT managers,” explains Gavin. “As the Government continues with its de-centralisation strategy the LEA’s and individual schools are able to regain control of their buying power and are therefore selecting their own providers of firewall and web filtering protection, which is why we have been so successful in our tenders.”
The company provides its services directly to over 1,200 schools and to 1,400 schools via LEA’s in the region. It also works with the Yorkshire & Humber Grid for Learning (YHGFL) which is a broadband consortium that buys in internet protection for 550 schools. As a result of the recent contract wins, Smoothwall now supplies a significant percentage of all primary and over one third of all secondary schools in the UK with firewall and filtering protection.
North Yorkshire County Council’s Richard King says: “When it comes to the e-safety of pupils it is paramount that they can be protected at all times from an ever evolving range of online threats. It’s also essential that teachers can continue to use web-based learning tools without being disrupted on a daily basis, which is why Smoothwall’s technology is proving so popular.”
Gavin concludes: “Our Guardian Web Filtering system scans the content of web pages in real-time rather than having to rely on teachers and IT network managers to block individual sites which means undesirable material and online games are detected and blocked automatically. Because we develop and update the technology in-house this also means that we can react immediately to online threats allowing schools to always be one step ahead of the online development cycle.”
As part of Smoothwall’s commitment to e-safety in schools, the firm is currently working with leading Oxford University academic researcher Dr. Brian Brady to ensure that delivering the highest levels of e-safety is a priority in schools. This collaboration has produced a series of White Papers which illustrate how the law operates and impacts on teachers, heads and governors within this challenging new environment.
