In March, the DfE set new broadband internet standards for schools and colleges. The standards will help you choose the right connection type and speed, and ensure resilient and safe infrastructure.
In order to meet the standards, your school or college needs three things:
- A full-fibre broadband connection – either a leased line or FTTP.
- Primary schools should have a minimum 100Mbps download speed and a minimum of 30Mbps upload speed.
- Secondary schools, all-through schools and further education colleges should have a connection with the capacity to deliver 1Gbps download and upload speed.
2. A fail-over or backup broadband service to ensure resilience.
A failover circuit is simply a second line or connection that comes into play only if the main broadband line fails.
3. Appropriate IT security and safeguarding systems.
Your school should already be meeting these standards as part of your ongoing safeguarding requirements under Keeping Children Safe in Education. In particular, you must ensure that your school uses a content filtering service as described in the online safety section of keeping children safe in education, paragraphs 123-135.
Click here to see the DfE standards
Does Internet4schools service meet the DfE broadband internet standards?
Absolutely. We offer full-fibre broadband, as either a leased line or FTTP to all schools as soon as it comes available.
All our broadband contracts come with the option to include a backup line or ‘fail over’ circuit to ensure resilience. If your school does not already have a fail-over circuit, we can provide another line at any point in your contract.
Find out more about our broadband service
Internet4schools’ parent company, E2BN, has been helping keep pupils safe online for over two decades. Our content filtering product, ‘Protex’, is fully compliant with KCSiE. It is available as either a self-managed or fully-managed service. Protex gives schools all the controls they need for age-appropriate, granular, contextual content filtering.
Find out how Protex content filtering keeps pupils safe online
To find out more about our broadband and filtering services, contact us