Safeguarding & Filtering for UK Schools and Trusts
Filtering and Monitoring Solutions
We are proud to be one of the UK's leading providers when it comes to Keeping Children Safe in Education and ensuring filtering and monitoring compliance is met. Our education-specific solutions support your school, providing a comprehensive approach that's underpinned by our expert safeguarding team.
Filtering, monitoring, training and the evidence to prove it — delivered as part of our managed IT service for schools and trusts across the UK, and ready for KCSIE 2026.
Ready for KCSIE 2026 — before September, not after
Keeping Children Safe in Education is updated every year, and the 2026 edition keeps filtering and monitoring exactly where recent editions put it: on the leadership agenda, not just the IT one. Your school is expected to have appropriate filtering and monitoring in place, to review that provision at least annually, to name who is responsible for it — with the DSL taking lead responsibility for safeguarding aspects — and to make sure governors and trustees can show they have assured themselves it all works. The DfE's filtering and monitoring standards ask the same four things of every school: assign roles, review annually, block harmful content without unreasonably impacting teaching, and have an effective monitoring strategy.
That is a lot to evidence from screenshots and email trails. As a full-service education IT provider, we build the review, the roles and the records into the service itself — so when the wording shifts each September, your provision and your paperwork move with it. We track each guidance update as it lands and translate it into plain actions for your DSL and SLT, whether you are a single primary school or a multi-academy trust standardising across every site.
Annual filtering and monitoring review — scheduled, delivered and documented for you
Named roles and responsibilities mapped, with the DSL taking the safeguarding lead
Provision checked against the DfE filtering and monitoring standards
Governor- and trustee-ready evidence, surfaced in AIT Horizon
MORE THAN JUST SOFTWARE
Fully Trained. Fully Supported
Access to technology and the internet can open up a remarkable interactive world for children. However, children also need to be educated about the dangers of the digital world, and teachers and school staff need to understand the correct protection that must be put in place. Our solutions help you to safeguard your pupils. We provide comprehensive e-safety in schools, supporting you in your legal duty of care and allowing you to meet OFSTED's recommendations. Our specialist trained staff can help guide your school, academy or trust through the latest guidance and advise on a solution which is right for your pupils, infrastructure and one that's compliant.
Receive Safeguarding Alert Calls
Custom website blocking tailored to sites, times and devices
Full KCSIE and OFSTED Compliance
Control devices from one central hub
Because we run your network, your broadband and your day-to-day IT support, filtering and monitoring is never a bolt-on that has to be made to fit — it is designed into the same infrastructure our engineers install and maintain.
Content Filtering
Our web filtering solution provides schools and MATs with one of the most comprehensive sets of education specific filters available. Thanks to providing you with a hosted solution, you'll benefit from no upfront costs or expensive maintenance. With our transparent pricing models and easy to understand contracts, you can get the right solution for the right price that doesn't compromise on performance.
Filtering that simply blocks everything fails the DfE test just as surely as filtering that blocks nothing — the standard is to block harmful and inappropriate content without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning. We tune policies by year group, subject, time of day and device type, so a sixth-form research task and a Year 2 laptop trolley get different rules on the same network. And because it is delivered UK-wide as a hosted service, a trust can apply one consistent baseline across every school while still allowing local, per-school adjustments.
Monitoring Solutions
AIT can provide your school or MAT with a monitoring solution that works within your education setting, and beyond if your school operates a BYOD policy. Our comprehensive monitoring solutions identify incidents for students before a critical event occurs that's backed up with powerful AI and human review team. With sophisticated scanning software that goes beyond just internet browsing data, our monitoring solutions give you visibility into warning signs you wouldn't otherwise see.
Monitoring is where KCSIE moves from technology to people: an alert only safeguards a child if the right adult sees it quickly and knows what to do next. That is why serious alerts can reach your DSL as a phone call, not just another unread email — and why every alert route, escalation contact and out-of-hours arrangement is agreed with your safeguarding team in writing during onboarding.
Support, Training & Guidance
Having effective filtering and monitoring solutions should go beyond the software. AIT provide all our schools with tailored training resources for SLT, DSLs and all school staff, which we can even deliver for you! Our e-safety team support your services with a variety of materials including regular updates, emails and safety bulletins for you to distribute. All these resources provide you with the means to support your pupils and help them understand the dangers of the internet.
KCSIE expects all staff — not just the DSL — to understand the filtering and monitoring systems in place and their role in them. Our training is built for that wording: short, role-specific sessions for teaching staff, deeper working sessions for DSLs and SLT, and a governor briefing that explains what to ask and what good looks like. It pairs naturally with our phishing awareness training for staff-side online safety.
MORE THAN JUST A SERVICE
Keeping Children Safe in Education
AIT Filtering and Monitoring solutions are carefully tailored to the needs and requirements within your school environment. We'll conduct a review of your current policies, solution and approach and then design a solution that meets KCSIE compliance as well as work effectively within an education setting; ensuring that any alerts can be highlighted effectively and promptly. You'll be fully supported by our e-safety team who will work with your DSL and SLT team to ensure you have the correct solutions in place alongside the right policies to meet OFSTED best proactive. At AIT we go beyond just providing a solution.
That review is not a one-off sales exercise — it becomes your annually repeating KCSIE review, on the calendar and owned by us, with the outcome written up so it can go straight into your next governors' pack. Filtering and monitoring also sits inside our wider security services for schools, alongside managed backup and disaster recovery, so your online safety provision and your cyber posture are reviewed together rather than in silos.
Regulatory Compliance
We have everything you need to meet DfE guidelines for broadband, security and safeguarding. Our security services supports full compliance with the following requirements:
- Prevent Duty
- Keeping Children Safe in Education
- Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) Block List and Image Hash List
- Home Office Terrorism Block List
- UK Safer Internet Centre
Our filtering provision is aligned with the DfE's digital and technology standards for schools — the same standards family we deliver against on DfE Connect the Classroom projects nationwide.
The evidence, where your DSL and governors can actually see it
Most schools can do filtering and monitoring. Far fewer can prove it on demand — at a governors' meeting, in an Ofsted conversation, or when a trust board asks how every school compares. That proof is what AIT Horizon, our leadership platform included with our service, was built to carry.
Horizon's RAG compliance tracker gives filtering and monitoring its own line, kept up to date by our team as the work happens. Your DSL opens the Schools view and sees, at a glance, an entry like: Filtering & Monitoring — Green. Annual review completed 12 March; next review due March next year; alert escalation contacts confirmed; staff awareness training delivered to 4 of 4 staff groups. (Figures illustrative.) If a review lapses or an action is outstanding, the line turns amber before it becomes a problem — no chasing, no guesswork.
For governors and trustees, the Executive view rolls the same picture up to the level they are accountable at. A trust safeguarding lead can see filtering and monitoring status RAG-rated across all of their schools on one screen — for example, 9 schools green and 1 amber with the outstanding action named (illustrative) — which is precisely the "assure yourselves" evidence KCSIE asks governing bodies to hold. Horizon's policies area keeps your online safety and acceptable use policies alongside the tracker, with review dates managed in the same place, and your strategy roadmap carries longer-term safeguarding work — such as a planned filtering platform change — so it is agreed and visible years ahead, not sprung on a budget meeting. Where that work has a cost attached, it appears in Horizon's IT Finance 5-year projections with the rest of your technology plan.
None of this is a live operational feed — it is a curated compliance record, maintained by the people doing the work, presented for the people accountable for it.
Horizon is one of four AIT platforms — alongside Helpdesk Reporting, AIT Atlas and AIT Ordering — all reached through one Customer Portal login.
Illustrative demo data
See how leaders use HorizonSafeguarding support for every kind of school
From single-form-entry primaries to national trusts, we tailor filtering and monitoring to the setting: primary schools, secondary schools, multi-academy trusts and independent schools. If online safety sits within a bigger conversation about your school's technology direction, our IT vision and digital strategy service brings it into a single plan.
Frequently asked questions
The core duties carry through from recent editions: schools must have appropriate filtering and monitoring in place, review the provision at least annually, assign clear roles and responsibilities (with the DSL taking lead responsibility for safeguarding aspects), and ensure all staff understand the systems and their part in them. Governing bodies and proprietors are expected to assure themselves that the DfE's filtering and monitoring standards are being met. Each new edition applies from the September of that year, so summer is the right time to review — we run that review for our schools and record the outcome in AIT Horizon.
It is shared, and KCSIE expects the shares to be named. The DSL takes lead responsibility for the safeguarding side, IT staff or your IT provider handle the technical operation and maintenance, all staff need to understand their role in reporting concerns, and governors or trustees must satisfy themselves that the standards are met. As your IT provider, we take on the technical share, run the annual review with your DSL, and surface the whole picture in Horizon so governors can evidence their oversight.
It shouldn't — the DfE standard explicitly says harmful content must be blocked without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning. Over-blocking is a compliance failure, not a safety feature. We tune policies by age group, subject, time and device, and because our helpdesk manages changes, a legitimate site a teacher needs can be reviewed and unblocked quickly rather than sitting in a queue for weeks.
Yes. Our monitoring solutions work within your education setting and beyond it where your school operates a BYOD or take-home device policy, scanning beyond just internet browsing data. Coverage, consent and out-of-hours escalation are agreed with your DSL and SLT as part of setup, so remote alerts follow the same tested route as in-school ones.
Inspectors and governors want the same three things: evidence that provision exists and is appropriate, evidence it is reviewed, and evidence the right people understand it. Our schools point to the annual review report, the training record, and the filtering and monitoring line in Horizon's RAG compliance tracker — with policies and review dates held alongside. It turns a scramble for screenshots into a two-minute answer.
LETS TALK
Get in touch
We understand the unique needs and challenges that are faced by schools, and we are all about finding a solution that works for you. Get in touch with our friendly team to have a chat about how we can support you on your digital journey.