Schools complain of iPad web filter issues after iOS 7 update

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Apple’s been making a big push into education in recent months, updating iTunes to allow users under the age of 13 and touting new features in iOS 7. It says the update makes it ‘easier for institutions to put devices in the hands of students.’

But for many schools with student iPads deployed, the update is actually making things more difficult. Various educators across the US are reporting that iOS 7 has left their devices unfiltered when accessing the Internet away from school…

AllThingsD reports:

“A number of schools that have upgraded their iPad deployments to iOS 7 say installing the new OS removed the supervision profiles they had installed on the devices. This rendered those iPads unsupervised, depriving administrators of their remote management privileges and eliminating the filtering protections they had established to protect students from inappropriate content they might stumble upon outside school.

“Apple did not realize that installing iOS 7 would remove our (and thousands of organizations across the country) safety protection measure, which now makes the iPad devices unfiltered when accessing the Internet away from school,” said a memo from the Manitou Springs (Colo.) School District 14 to parents, verified by AllThingsD.”

In the short term, the district says they will be collecting iPad devices at the end of each day until the safety protection measure is reinstalled. And other districts have resorted to collecting all student iPads, wiping them, and returning them.

Talk about inconvenience—can you imagine having to do that with hundreds, or even thousands of tablets? Some schools have gone so far as to adjust their network settings to block over-the-air iOS 7 updates, in order to avoid the issue.

An Apple spokesperson told AllThingsD that the company is “aware of this issue, and will have a fix this month.”