Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 9 June 2025 to Question 54726 on Schools: internet, what steps she is taking to ensure blocks on illegal content are (a) technically enforced and (b) cannot be overridden in all education settings.

Keeping children safe is an absolute priority for this government and schools play a critical role in this.

In England, schools must procure their own technology, including filtering and monitoring systems, and ensure they meet the statutory safeguarding requirements set out in the ‘Keeping children safe in education’ (KCSIE) statutory guidance and in the filtering and monitoring standards, in order to protect students from harmful and/or illegal content. Both are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2 and https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/filtering-and-monitoring-standards-for-schools-and-colleges.

The standards require filtering systems to effectively block harmful and inappropriate content using regularly updated blocklists from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU). Schools cannot alter or disable these lists. Additionally, filtering providers must be members of the IWF, signed up to CTIRU, and committed to maintaining updates.

KCSIE signposts to resources to help schools make informed decisions to support safeguarding which, amongst others, includes a tool from South West Grid for Learning that allows schools to check whether their filtering provider is aligned with the necessary blocklists. This resource is available here: https://swgfl.org.uk/services/test-filtering/. We also funded the UK Safer Internet Centre to produce a series of webinars, which are available at: https://saferinternet.org.uk/blog/filtering-and-monitoring-webinars-available. We have also recently launched the plan technology for your school service which helps schools understand how to meet the standards. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-technology-for-your-school.