King Edward VII Academy – Smoothwall Filter Case Study

What’s the background?

King Edward VII Academy is a successful voluntary-controlled comprehensive school for girls and boys aged 11 to 18 years situated in King’s Lynn, West Norfolk. The school is a Specialist Sports College with 1380 pupils on roll of whom 280 are in the Sixth Form.

King Edward VII Academy strives to provide a caring and well-organised environment in which all students have an equal opportunity to achieve their full potential. Network Manager, Simon Anderson, looks after the school’s network which consists of over 500 Windows PCs. Access to the Internet is via the school’s 100MB connection.

What was the challenge?

King Edward VII Academy wanted to better control and manage Internet usage and needed a filtering solution that could effectively block all inappropriate content and integrate well with the school’s existing network and environment.

Simon decided to evaluate Smoothwall Filter after a colleague in another school recommended it, and he saw the software in action at the BETT education show. Upon trialling the solution on a Unix box, he was pleased to find it easy to install, use and integrate with the school’s authentication system. As a filtering system, Smoothwall Filter was employed to complement the school’s County-supplied e-safety proactive monitoring system.

How Smoothwall helped

King Edward VII Academy has been using Smoothwall Filter for a while now and Simon commented that it is consistently performing well and helping to keep student browsing within safe limits. Smoothwall Filter is also proving itself reliable as to date, he says he has had no reason to contact support.

Simon comments, “Secure Web Gateway runs out of the box and has needed very little tweaking to bed it in with our current network. The interface is great – intuitive and really easy to use. It has lower costs in comparison to other products and actually saves me time because it requires very little monitoring and reports can be run when necessary.”

Simon continues to describe how the solution has helped the school. “It is effectively blocking inappropriate content and helping to keep the students on track during lessons. Staff can relax a little more when teaching using the Internet as they know the students will be safer.”