School device management and web filtering is software that controls the laptops and tablets that a school gives its students, and filters and monitors what students can open on them. It sets up each device, decides which apps the device can run, blocks unsuitable websites, and shows teachers what is on each student's screen during a class. The software is sold mainly to school districts in the United States, where most students get a laptop from their school, so the example here is American.
A school district is the local body that runs the government schools in one area of the United States. Under a US law, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), schools that receive certain federal funds for internet access must filter what students can see online. So nearly every district buys web filtering.
Consider a school district in Texas that gives each of its 18,000 students a Chromebook, a low-cost laptop that runs Google's operating system. Before the term starts, the district's IT team enrols each laptop with the management software. This software works like unified endpoint management (UEM), the software that companies use to set up and update every laptop they own. Each laptop is linked to one student. It receives the school's settings: which apps are installed, which apps are blocked, and which Wi-Fi networks it joins. A small program on each laptop, an endpoint agent, applies these settings and reports back.
The filter works wherever the laptop goes, at school or at home. Each time a student opens a website, the laptop first looks up the site's address, through a system called DNS. DNS security checks the site's name against lists of categories, and blocks gambling and adult sites. A deeper filter, like a secure web gateway, checks the pages themselves. So it can allow one science video on a video site, but block the other videos on the same site.
In class, a teacher sees a small picture of each student's screen. Say an eighth-grade maths teacher has set an online exercise. She sees that three students have opened a game. She can close the game on their laptops from her own screen, or lock every laptop on the exercise for 20 minutes.
Some products also scan what students type and search, to find signs that a student may harm themselves, and they alert a school counsellor. This is the most debated feature, because it means reading students' private writing. Parents ask who sees the alerts and how long the data is kept. A school that uses it must follow data protection law.
In India, few schools give every student a laptop. But several state governments have given laptops or tablets to students, and such devices need the same kind of management.