William Howard is a community school and serves the town of Brampton and the surrounding districts. During the school day, William Howard is a mixed 11 to 18 comprehensive school. Outside school hours it is centre for adult education, theatrical and music performances, clubs and community meetings. The school is very much a part of the community it serves

William Howard School was not unique in experiencing difficulty in managing student email use through the standard functionality of Microsoft Outlook. The school suffered frequently at the hands of pupils abusing email system rights. Not only were a minority of students generating and sending large volumes of ‘junk’ mail, slowing network resources and reducing efficiency, but they were able to send emails containing language of an offensive or unacceptable nature to both fellow students and teachers. A solution to eliminate such abuse could not be found within the Microsoft Outlook email client and the school turned to RedFox for a solution.

Martin Robson, Network Manager states:

“Using the old email solution, Microsoft Outlook, a small number of students were using the ‘Global’ send function to deliver nuisance emails, of which a few were of an offensive or defamatory nature…”

Martin continues:

“RedFox MiniMail has now limited student email capabilities to ensure email use is kept within acceptable guidelines and now that ‘junk’ mail is no longer an issue, teachers at the school are increasingly adopting email as a means of communication…”

RedFox MiniMail is designed to co-exist with Microsoft Outlook, but incorporates a simplified user interface for student use and offers increased network control and management functionality for network administrators. A key benefit to RedFox MiniMail is that teachers may continue to use Microsoft Outlook, and the extensive functionality found within the product, whilst students are restricted to using RedFox MiniMail, eliminating the possibility of email system abuse.

Such abuse can range from students sending nuisance global emails to each and every account listed on the system, including all the staff, to the use of explicit or otherwise unacceptable language directed at individual users or user groups.

Most abuse issues stem from the limited control over the functionality available in Microsoft Outlook, ostensibly an email client designed for corporate usage. It is Microsoft Outlook’s relative inflexibility, in a classroom environment, that can result in considerable inconvenience, expense or even lasting damage to a school’s reputation.

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