Headlands School & Bridlington Sports College

Case Study

Chris Withers
Director of ICT
Bridlington

http://www.headlandsschool.co.uk/

The Background

Headlands School and Community Science College are a large, 11 - 19 comprehensive school, located in the seaside town of Bridlington in the East Riding of Yorkshire. There are approximately 1250 students on roll, including nearly 200 in a thriving and rapidly growing sixth form. As a designated Science College we provide a broad and balanced curriculum, working in partnership to provide for the needs of all our students.

How many users/computers do you support and how are they spread out?

Headlands School 750 PCs, 1200 users. Bridlington Sports College 550 PCs 1000 users

What environment is your Smoothwall product running in?

Windows environment

What type of user authentication do you use?

NTLM

What was the problem that needed to be solved, that required you to look for a new system?

We needed a reliable filtering system that would help support teaching and learning. For example, we required a search engine filter that was more intelligent than the schools previous system i.e. we could not search for anything that had the word 'women' in it without it being blocked.

Why did you choose Smoothwall?

During live trials with various filtering engines we found Smoothwall to be the best.

What has your Smoothwall product enabled you to do?

After the successful implementation of two Smoothwall SWG-1200 Secure Web Gateways it gave the both schools the confidence to purchase dedicated leased lines and move away from the poor Internet feed provided by the Local Authority. We can now provide a staged filtering system for KS3, KS4, KS5 and staff so they can get an appropriate level of filtering for their age and curriculum that they are studying /teaching. We also bought two Smoothwall UTM-300s to protect both schools network as firewall, email relay and VPN.

How has your Smoothwall product made you or your colleagues job easier?

Yes. IT teachers no longer have to worry about students playing games accessing inappropriate material on the school network. We can unlock or block a site in a matter of a couple of minutes.

Did we replace a solution from another company? Or who did we compete with?

Bloxx and the Local Authority solution

Are you dealing directly with Smoothwall or through one of our Partners?

Smoothwall Direct

Do you have any comments about the quality of service you received from Smoothwall or our Partners?

Smoothwall customer service is fantastic. Everyone you speak to is an expert and knows their products inside out. Any issues are resolved quickly and professionally.

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