Become a Friendly WiFi Approved School
We’re delighted to be working in partnership with Friendly WiFi to provide a discounted rate for UK Schools to become a Friendly WiFi Approved School.
The 'Friendly WiFi' symbol is available to any organisation providing public WiFi, who are committed to supporting the need for safe access to online content. The 'Friendly WiFi' symbol is displayed by each organisation meeting the standard.
Wherever this symbol is displayed on site or online, parents and young people can be assured that the correct basic filters are in place and the public WiFi service is safe to use.
What is Friendly Wifi?
Schools want to offer WiFi access to learners, visitors and parents. More and more public WiFi (in coffee shops and supermarkets, for example) is now meeting the Friendly WiFi safe standard to show users that it is safe to use.
Friendly WiFi is the world’s first safe certification standard, initiated by the UK Government and designed to verify whether a WiFi service meets a minimum level of filtering to block out access to pornographic and child abuse websites.
Become a Friendly WiFi Approved School and show your learners, parents and visitors that your WiFi is filtered and safe.
How can SWGfL help?
We’ve worked out a special deal for schools that means schools will pay a single, low annual fee.
Primary schools (and equivalents) are just £25 per year, and secondary schools (and equivalents) are just £50 per year when using the exclusive discount code in our application form here [LINK], regardless of how many access points there are.
The normal charge per access point starts at £27, so this will save some schools quite significant amounts of money.
Also, as the lead partner in the UK Safer Internet Centre, we’ve done a lot of work on appropriate filtering in education settings and we’re now working to pre-approve content filtering products for the Friendly WiFi safe standard. That means that if you’re using one of the content filtering solutions we’ve approved, you’ll automatically pass that stage of the application process.
How does a school obtain the Friendly WiFi Approved School certification?
To obtain the certification, all you need to do is complete the application form [LINK] and provide evidence that your WiFi service is filtered to meet the following levels of protection:
- Blocking access to material on the IWF URL List.
- Blocking access to material on the CTIRU list.
- Blocking access to pornography.
The IWF URL List is a list of webpages that are known to contain images and/or videos of child sexual abuse, advertisements for or links to such content.
The CTIRU list (or ‘the police assessed list of unlawful terrorist content, produced on behalf of the Home Office’) is a list of webpages that are known to contain unlawful terrorist content.
A site visit is not required.
