BACKGROUND
Founded in 1541, Berkhamsted Schools Group is one of the UK’s oldest independent school networks, with a proud tradition of academic excellence and a strong commitment to innovation. Today, across its Hertfordshire campuses, the Group serves pupils aged 3–18 and continues to evolve its teaching and learning approach through the thoughtful integration of educational technology.
As digital learning became increasingly embedded across the curriculum, Berkhamsted implemented a 1:1 device programme to enhance student engagement and enable flexible learning both in and outside the classroom. With this shift came the growing responsibility to ensure that students could access online resources safely, that teachers had visibility and control in their digital classrooms, and that the school could make data-informed decisions about its technology investments.
THE CHALLENGE
Before adopting Lightspeed Systems, Berkhamsted Schools relied on two separate products: Netsweeper for web filtering and Senso.cloud for classroom management and monitoring. While both offered specific capabilities, they operated independently of each other, which soon became a challenge for the school’s IT and teaching teams.
The disconnect between the systems meant filtering policies and classroom controls weren’t aligned, creating inconsistencies and confusion. Reporting was fragmented, making it difficult to correlate safeguarding alerts with classroom behaviour or web activity. Furthermore, with the large number of students enrolled at Berkhamsted, the previous software was not able to give visibility of all devices, therefore maintaining consistent policy enforcement and visibility became increasingly complex.
For Jo Hughes, Group Director of EdTech, these challenges highlighted the need for a unified, future-focused solution. “We wanted more than a collection of tools,” she explained. “Our vision was for an integrated platform that could manage filtering, classroom control, and safeguarding alerts in one place — something that supported the whole digital learning ecosystem.”
SOLUTIONS
After a thorough evaluation, Berkhamsted Schools chose Lightspeed Systems as their trusted partner for online safety and digital learning management. The school implemented Lightspeed Filter™, Lightspeed Alert™, Lightspeed Classroom™, and Lightspeed Insight™ — an integrated suite designed to protect students, empower teachers, and give administrators complete visibility across all devices.
Lightspeed’s unified platform stood out immediately. Its cloud-based architecture allowed consistent policy enforcement on and off the school network, including the ability to allow parents access to the Lightspeed parent portal dashboard, while its intuitive interface reduced the time needed to monitor activity, manage classes, and respond to safeguarding concerns. Importantly, the integration between products meant IT and teaching staff could work seamlessly, sharing data and insights across filtering, classroom control, and alerts without switching between systems. “From day one the promise was clear, one console, one policy set, one vendor approach,” said Charlie Cochrane. “In the past we had to jump between Netsweeper for filtering and Senso for monitoring; with Lightspeed we saw the two come together. It felt like the missing piece of the puzzle.”
The IT team worked closely with Lightspeed’s onboarding specialists to migrate policies and set up role-based dashboards. Over the summer term, the system was deployed across all devices, giving both teachers and safeguarding leads access to the tools they needed before the start of the new academic year.
CONCLUSION
Alongside the immediate impact of Lightspeed Filter, Alert, and Classroom, Berkhamsted Schools quickly recognised the strategic benefits delivered by Lightspeed Insight. The tool provided a new layer of visibility into the school’s digital ecosystem, helping IT and leadership teams understand exactly which web applications were being accessed across student and staff devices.
With this data, Berkhamsted could identify potential risks related to GDPR compliance and data privacy, ensuring that only approved and secure applications were in use. Insight’s detailed analytics also enabled the school to track software licences and monitor spending, empowering decision-makers to manage renewals, eliminate redundant subscriptions, and optimise their edtech investment.
“We chose Lightspeed because we viewed it not just as a filter or classroom tool, but as a strategic edtech platform for the next five years. The deployment has shown us that we made the right decision.”
— Jo Hughes, Group Director of EdTech, Berkhamsted Schools Group
