Internet Filtering in Secondary Schools Education, Leisure & Lifelong Learning Baglan Information Technology Centre
C O N T E N T S Page Background... 1 Teaching e-safety... 1 Internet Filtering... 2 Assigning Internet permission... 2 Internet Filter Levels... 2 Blacklist and Whitelist... 3 Blacklist... 3 The Whitelist... 4 Useful Documents... 4
Background The Internet is an unmanaged, open communications channel. The World Wide Web, e-mail, blogs and social networking all transmit information using the Internet s communication infrastructure internationally at low cost. Anyone can send messages, discuss ideas and publish material with little restriction. These features of the Internet make it an invaluable resource used by millions of people every day. Schools need to protect themselves from legal challenge. The law is catching up with Internet developments: for example it is an offence to store images showing child abuse and to use e-mail, text or Instant Messaging (IM) to groom children. Schools can help protect themselves by making it clear to pupils, staff and visitors that the use of school equipment for inappropriate reasons is unauthorised. However, schools should be aware that a disclaimer is not sufficient to protect a school from a claim of personal injury and the school needs to ensure that all reasonable actions have been taken and measures put in place to protect users. Teaching e-safety Developing effective practice in Internet use for teaching and learning is essential. Librarians and teachers can help pupils to learn how to distil the meaning from the mass of information provided by the Internet. Often the quantity of information is overwhelming and staff may guide pupils to appropriate websites, or teach search skills. Offering younger pupils a few good sites is often more effective than an Internet search. Above all pupils need to learn to evaluate everything they read and to refine their own publishing and communications with others via the Internet. BITC Internet Filtering in Secondary Schools Page 1
Internet Filtering Much of the material on the Internet is published for an adult audience and some is unsuitable for pupils. In addition, there is information on weapons, crime and racism access to needs to have suitable controls around it. Web filtering software is designed to limit an end users access to specific sites on the Internet. It should not inhibit school users from accessing appropriate teaching and learning materials. The software currently in use in NPT is set to filter agreed site categories. The majority of web sites are assigned to a category when they are known e.g. entertainment, games, adult content. Even when Internet filtering software is being used you cannot guarantee that users will be able to access unsuitable material. Some websites may not have a category set against them or others may not be categorised appropriately. In such a case it is vital that the person responsible for e-safety within the school reports the full URL (web address) www so that appropriate action can be taken. It is good practice to check the whole of the website and any external links from that site as these may also contain unsuitable material. Assigning Internet permission The school can determine who gets permission to access the Internet. It is recommended that all users have Internet Access and that they have an appropriate level of Internet filtering assigned to them. Group user names should not be used to access the Internet it is extremely difficult to trace issues back to an individual. All users who have access to the school managed service system must sign an Acceptable Use form indicating that they understand what is meant by Safe and Responsible Use of the Internet. Internet Filter Levels The Secondary standards forum group agree the levels of filtering for all secondary schools. This is endorsed by the Senior Management team of the Education Leisure and Lifelong Services. The document Summary of Current WebSense Settings Secondary contains information about which Internet categories are filtered in each of the levels. The levels are categorised to give system administrators an idea of the target group. Level 0 (No Access) No access to the Internet. However, Internet Explorer is still accessible this will be useful for exam users as it allows the BITC Internet Filtering in Secondary Schools Page 2
browser to be run but does not allow any access via internet protocols, only file-server protocols. Level 1 (Very Restricted) no access to search engines. Level 2 (Typical Pupil) Level 3 (Typical Staff) Level 4 (Exceptionally Open) - This still has a base level of filtering e.g. Illegal and questioning, Proxy Bypass, Adult content. The system has been designed to be flexible and to meet the needs of the user. The Internet Filter level can be changed if the current level applied does not provide appropriate access: the names Typical Pupil, Typical Staff etc are only a guide. It is recommended that schools develop their own Internet filtering policy which enables users to access sites which meet their curriculum needs. Blacklist and Whitelist These facilities provide additional filtering. The Blacklist and whitelist are lists of internet sites which get applied to rules on the firewall. The blacklist is a list of sites which are always blocked for every user within the school. The whitelist is a list of safe sites to which all users in the school are allowed access without granting them any Internet permissions. If an item appears in both lists, it will get blocked. Secondary schools have control over these lists. If an item is in a forbidden Internet filtering software category it will still get blocked, even if it appears in the Whitelist. A block rule will always override an allow rule. Blacklist The Blacklist is used by schools to deny access to any website that is deemed unsuitable by the school for anyone to access. These are usually nuisance sites. This is in addition to the Internet filtering software applied by Baglan IT Centre to all machines connected to the network. An example would be a violent games site which the children access and which is not filtered. The school can add the site to the Blacklist. The site would then be filtered for all users. Please note: Sites that are deemed unsuitable for use in school should not be added to the Blacklist these should be reported to Baglan IT Centre where they will be dealt with appropriately. BITC Internet Filtering in Secondary Schools Page 3
The Whitelist This is a list of websites that schools feel very secure in giving pupils access to. The pupil user name does not require any Internet permissions in order to access these sites. This a walled garden approach to Internet access. When pupils go on to the Internet they will only gain access to websites in the whitelist. When pupils click on a link to another website that is not on the whitelist, the proxy pop up box appears to ask for an Internet user name to log on to continue. Please note: A site that is filtered by the filtering software cannot be added to the Whitelist. Useful Documents Summary of Current WebSense Settings Secondary Baseline URLs E-safety Policy Guidance Primary and special school core e-safety policy Staff AUP BITC Internet Filtering in Secondary Schools Page 4