About Hale School

Hale School is Perth’s oldest and leading boys’ school with a reputation of excellence located in Wembley Downs, a western suburb of Perth, Western Australia.

The following is an interview with Director of Learning Technologies, Rob Barugh.

Challenges

I've been at Hale for 20 years and we have used lots of firewall solutions over the years, each with different reporting packages. The modern web has changed the game when it comes to reports. The reports that come out of firewalls showing the websites people have been ‘visiting’ are really really complicated to the point I don't feel comfortable sharing them with pastoral staff as they just get blown away with how much detail is in them. It's been really problematic for quite a while

We adopted one of the larger global players in firewall technologies to make sure we had cyber-security at the school covered as best as possible. Unfortunately their reporting packages are not sensitive to school requirements. They’re designed more for IT teams and have more of a business focus. 

• Choosing a top-tier security solution usually means compromising on critical pastoral care reports that schools need.

• The modern web has made reports too complicated and meaningless for pastoral staff.

Why Fastvue?

Having Fastvue handle the reporting piece was an absolute god-send. It meant we were able to choose a best of breed security solution without compromising on our pastoral care reporting

How Hale School use Fastvue Reporter

Fastvue's alerts around student welfare are really important for us. We're receiving real-time alerts on self-harm searches, adult and profanity, extremism and drugs. The self-harm alert in particular is very important that it gets to the key pastoral staff in a timely manner.

Sadly we have had some self-harm alerts that we've had to respond to that were reasonably critical. We take them all very seriously, and for the families concerned, it is incredibly important that we're able to pick up on these issues to lend assistance such as psychologists and other support staff. 

We also love the YouTube reporting feature. Schools want to leverage the wealth of information available on YouTube, but of course YouTube also causes some problems in schools. Being able to accurately report on YouTube activity and pass reports on that make sense to people is incredibly important.

When I get a request for a report on a specific student or group of students, I have typically been very reluctant to pass on the log of activity, but with Fastvue’s Site Clean feature, I have a lot more confidence that the staff member is going to be able to make sense of it. It doesn't require myself or one of the IT team to hold their hand and explain what it is they're looking at.

We also have 200 borders at the school and they get a different internet experience during their recreational hours which aligns with what a day student would have when they’re at home. They're a unique group of students where we have to tailor their internet access at different times of the day and we do quite a lot of reporting for that group specifically for the boarding house masters.

• Self-harm alerts sent to key pastoral staff in a timely manner.

• Accurate reporting on YouTube videos watched.

• Reports that pastoral staff can make sense of.

• Reporting on border students with less restricted internet access during recreational hours.

I’ve been absolutely wrapped with how the product is progressing and wish Fastvue all the best moving forward.