RM Tech Talk issue 7

Welcome to issue 7 of Tech Talk from RM, your monthly roundup of insights to help inform your school or trust’s digital strategy. Hopefully you were able to use the October half-term holiday to recharge your batteries.

Don’t forget to share Tech Talk with colleagues who might find it useful, and let us know what you think by adding a comment. 

NCSC PDNS announcement

In October, the National Cyber Security Centre announced the extension of its PDNS (Protective Domain Name System) for schools. New categories of education establishments can now sign up for the extra protection it offers.

If you’re unsure what PDNS is or whether you need to take steps to incorporate it into your school or trust’s cyber security arrangements, our latest blog post explains everything.

DfE updates filtering and monitoring standards for schools and colleges

On 22nd October, the Department for Education published updates to its filtering and monitoring standards for schools and colleges. The new standards are on the DfE website in full. RM’s Tasha Henstock, Product Manager for RM SafetyNet, gives a handy summary of the updates to each of the four elements of this standard:

• Identify and assign roles and responsibilities to manage your filtering and monitoring systems.

The overall strategic responsibility of governing bodies and others to ensure appropriate systems are in place is emphasised. Individual roles such as the designated safeguarding lead (DSL), IT support and the school leadership team (SLT) are all mentioned, as are the expectations placed upon them.

• Review your filtering and monitoring provision at least annually.

There is a more comprehensive assessment of student risk profiles and how they should inform your approach. These now require you to consider how your establishment uses technology, including generative artificial intelligence.

• Filtering systems should block harmful and inappropriate content, without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning.

Restrictions on search engine and browser use are required, to provide an additional level of protection.

Any bring your own devices (BYOD) need to have adequate filtering and monitoring measures in place. If not school or college-managed, they should be on a separate virtual network.

Where devices do not have functioning filtering and monitoring clear expectations for their use should be established.

Some technologies (for example apps or mobile) deliver content in ways that can reduce the effectiveness of web-content filtering measures. Schools should take steps to mitigate this risk.

• Have effective monitoring strategies that meet the safeguarding needs of your school or college.

The role of in-person monitoring is clarified to explain that staff should conduct in-person monitoring as part of wider classroom supervision.

The technical requirements to meet the standard now include requirements for school or college-managed devices, monitoring reports, and incident response. The standard states that schools and colleges should have a policy for incident response in relation to monitoring incidents.

The technical requirements to meet the standard now include the instruction that everyone using the school or college network knows that filtering and monitoring processes are in place. Users should also be notified that the device they’re using is being monitored.

Our website has more about KCSiE compliant filtering with RM SafetyNet.

A year in the technology life of a growing multi-academy trust

According to the most recent National School Trust Report, two-thirds (66%) of trust CEOs expect the number of schools in their trust to increase over the next year. In the same report, over half of trusts’ operational priorities include focusing on technology, data and IT infrastructure.

For a growing trust, it can be tricky to understand where to make investments and changes to have the most impact. RM has experience helping trusts of all sizes assess their IT priorities and deliver projects to meet their objectives.

For Brooke Weston Trust, the academic year 2023/24 involved adding a new primary school and preparing to open a new secondary school. In addition, other schools in the trust benefitted from technology improvements, including updates to networking, cyber security and moving systems to the cloud.

This article on the Confederation of School Trusts website explains more about what they achieved and why they did it.

RM and Internet Watch Foundation - 20 years of partnership

The DfE’s standards on filtering and monitoring specify that The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) lists of illegal websites are included with filtering solutions used by schools. RM SafetyNet uses both lists as standard.

In fact, RM has worked with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) for 20 years to keep pupils safe from inappropriate content with RM SafetyNet filtering. Our managing director, Jason Tomlinson, and IWF’s Deputy CEO, Heidi Kempster, recently reflected on the partnership's 20 years and what the future holds. You can read their thoughts on the RM blog. 

RM and HP combine to return over £250,000 to UK schools.

We’ve spoken about the HP Brighter Futures scheme in previous editions of Tech Talk. However, we couldn’t resist mentioning an impressive milestone for the programme this month.

According to our latest data, schools and trusts in the UK have received £257,200 cashback in the eight months of the current scheme when buying HP devices through RM. That’s more than £10,000 more than last year, and there are still four months to go.

For more details about HP Brighter Futures, visit our online store or read the case study.

Events and webinars

The events page on our website gives details of events we’re attending and our ongoing series of webinars on relevant topics. Forthcoming highlights include:

• We will attend the Confederation of School Trusts’ annual conference in Birmingham on November 7th and 8th. RM will deliver a workshop alongside Lauren Thorpe of United Learning entitled “Building a safe and effective AI environment in schools and trusts.”

• Boosting inclusion is a hot topic for many schools and trusts currently. Our webinar on 21st November titled “Unlocking Microsoft accessibility tools for every school” will showcase the accessibility tools Microsoft offers that will help your school to foster a more inclusive learning environment. Register now.

On demand webinars

"Unlocking the potential of Google Workspace for educators" - hosted by Google Certified trainer and RM’s Senior Educational Consultant, Dave Fitzpatrick, this webinar covers essential tips and tricks and explores lesser-known features of Google Workspace for Education. Watch the recording.

"Future Schools: Using broadband to bring your curriculum alive." Ashley Morris, Network Manager, Mary Webb School and Science College and Tim Greenbank School Relationship Executive, RM Technology explain how RM’s broadband services are an ideal basis for integrating tech into the classroom, to create the ‘Future School.’ Watch the recording.

That’s all for this month. We’ll be back with another RM Tech Talk towards the end of November. Until then, follow us on LinkedIn to keep up with the latest on technology for schools and trusts.

If you missed any previous issues of RM Tech Talk, you can read them in the archive.