Case Study

Eastern Learning Alliance was formed in 2020 and currently looks after 4,500 pupils across six schools, with a seventh school being opened soon. Alasdair Perrin has been the Director of IT at Eastern Learning Alliance since it was formed but has been involved with IT at Impington Village College, a school under the trust, since 2010. “We look after everything IT,” Alasdair explains. “Any time education needs something that has some form of technology involved in it, that’s where we have to be right from the start to come up with solutions and recommendations.”

Challenge: Centralising Filtering For Multiple Schools

Alasdair and his team didn’t always have the same level of control and influence over their IT systems. When he moved to Impington Village College they were using a very basic proxy filter, which allowed them very little control over policies and long-winded authentication methods. Shortly after, Alasdair attended a conference with five other schools in the Cambridge area and soon realised they all shared similar frustrations with their existing filtering systems. Alasdair and the other IT managers decided to work together to find a better solution. “We got together, and we invited Lightspeed to present. We all looked at Lightspeed Filter™ and said: Yes, I want one of those,” he explained.

Solution: Lightspeed Filter To Replace Basic Proxy Filter

Since then, Alasdair has been using Lightspeed Filter in all its iterations and has deployed it across the entire trust, where technology and devices are more prominent than ever. “Three of our secondary schools are fully one-to-one. We have 3,500 mobile devices. Then we have 1,000 desktops and 900 laptops,” Alasdair tells us. “To deploy Lightspeed Filter to across multiple schools was really, really easy. In terms of getting the client out there, you just put it into install, and in it comes. We’re slightly special in that we have onboarding procedures where we absorb active directories into a central directory, and we centralise everything.”

This centralisation doesn’t mean that all students across the trust are forced to have the same online experience. With a wide range of ages and abilities, Lightspeed Filter lets Eastern Learning Alliance tailor their policies and levels of control for each of its school’s needs. “Because we range from primary school all the way through to post-16, if we over block, they never get exposed to risks [and] they can’t identify it.” Alasdair says, “Our post-16 Criminology students, for example, have a really tough time trying to find stuff on violent crime and YouTube videos on that. We can bespoke not just to the sixth form over there, but we can allow the Criminology students to access these potentially harmful categories.”

Other systems that do filtering with transparent, externalised, and global proxies don’t know who you are; they just know what filtering level you should have. That might be online safety, but it’s not safeguarding. I haven’t found anything out there that is quite as competent at doing online safeguarding globally.

With more devices going home and an increase in remote and hybrid learning across the trust, Eastern Learning Alliance also wanted to ensure the same level of protection and reporting on devices when they were outside of the school network. “Because we have so many devices that go home, the key feature that we needed to have was a global filter and a global log,” Alasdair says. “Other systems that do filtering with transparent, externalised, and global proxies don’t know who you are; they just know what filtering level you should have. That might be online safety, but it’s not safeguarding. I haven’t found anything out there that is quite as competent at doing online safeguarding globally.”

Eastern Learning Alliance also looked at UK statutory guidance, including the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (EIF) and the Department for Education’s Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), and were happy that Lightspeed Filter ticked all the boxes. “It absolutely meets the Keeping Children Safe in Education requirements,” Alasdair declares. “I know the others are racing to catch up because I’ve seen a lot of Smoothwall changes … but it’s too late to the game. Lightspeed offers a complete package.”

On top of ensuring their students’ devices are safeguarded, Eastern Learning Alliance also needed a management platform that allowed them to control and configure and filter multiple schools’ devices centrally. Alasdair had inherited Lightspeed Mobile Device Management™ (MDM) at one of his sites and soon discovered it was the perfect tool for the job. “We chose Lightspeed MDM because it snaps into the filter seamlessly. There is no weird configuration or risk that I’ve got it wrong,” Alasdair explains. “That was a key decider; the fact that it would snap-in. By staying within the same ecosystem, we unleash the power of Lightspeed’s directory sync.”

We chose Lightspeed MDM because it snaps into the filter seamlessly. There is no weird configuration or risk that I've got it wrong. That was a key decider; the fact that it would snap-in. By staying within the same ecosystem, we unleash the power of Lightspeed’s directory sync.

Directory syncing, as part of Lightspeed’s SmartSync technology, provides network administrators with a tool to sync Active Directory object data with Lightspeed Filter and other Lightspeed solutions. Alasdair discovered that configuring the directory sync in the right way could help save a lot of time and effort. “I’d ensconced myself in my office for a week and tested three different management tools. I had meetings with three more different filter providers to see if there was a better way of dealing with 1:1, iPads, and management, and there wasn’t,” Alasdair says. “By tacking Lightspeed MDM into the iPads and then into Lightspeed Filter, we get iPad management through Active Directory groups. Directory Sync brings in the group and shares it with Lightspeed MDM. As soon as you couple those together, it’s just self-administrating.”

An important part of Lightspeed MDM that was essential for Eastern Learning Alliance was the hierarchical design, allowing them to match the centralised structure of the trust. “We have one tenant because we want IT to access everything in terms of administration. We then bring it down into our Active Directory, which breaks down to each of the schools.” Alasdair explains, “If you want to send an app out to a whole school, or you want an icon on the device layout, by having them immediately grouped in those administration blocks, it gives us a local, bespoke, but central tool.”

If you want to have the simplest, lightest-touched system, but full integration to your authentication and to your administration, Lightspeed is the way to do it. It's the only one that does the full log and tracks and portable 24/7/365 globally. Nothing else can do it as well.

Results

Eastern Learning Alliance now have Lightspeed Filter and Lightspeed MDM firmly embedded into the learning experience, with the solutions being an integral part of the deployment process, no matter what size and age range their schools are. “For me, it’s the anywhere access, anytime, and on anything that’s really important. The fact that I have macOS, iOS, Windows, and Chrome, and they’re all filterable and reportable against the common authentication, is essential,” Alasdair concludes. “If you want to have the simplest, lightest-touched system, but full integration to your authentication and to your administration, Lightspeed is the way to do it. It’s the only one that does the full log and tracks and portable 24/7/365 globally. Nothing else can do it as well.”