Lockdowns

[Scan099]

Hi all

 

With the lockdown happening in a Welsh school today

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/amman-valley-school-live-updates-29051612

 

and our Welsh school not really having a lockdown policy

 

I am just wondering what other schools do for a lockdown situation? As I Know I will be asked questions?

[3s-gtech]

A distinct lockdown bell, that staff and students are well versed in;

A procedure in place - e.g. lock classroom doors, students to put phones away, etc;

Technical procedures - engage all maglocks with no override other than fire, email to staff, messages to parents;

A recognised bell for the end of a lockdown, and staff duties at this point;

SLT procedures - call the police, run bravely into harm’s way, send someone else bravely into harm’s way, or other responsibilities

 

It’s that kind of thing. Our policy is being updated so we’ll be going through all this again. The bell to notify and the practising with the students are the really important ones. Remember that a fire alarm always trumps everything too.

[mrbios]

Pretty similar to the above, but i also recommend netsupport notify for poping up emergency messages on staff screens.

[pete]

^ The obvious rarely-used bell sound is essential. It must sound noticably different. Not "we'll make the usual noise last a bit longer" as staff will assume someone's messed up bell timings and/or "maybe we're on fire and should assemble on the field".

 

Failover modes when people are on holiday/ill/offsite/herding a class and they can't fulfill any lockdown responsibilities. Or when people change jobs?

 

Can staff lock themselves and children somewhere secure? Are there enough keys?

 

If you're part of a MAT:

 

Can the estates/IT team from another school access your CCTV and provide access to police to track the situation?

 

Have you got a central phone system?

 

Are there site plans available of each school? Are they up to date?

 

How will inter-school visitors know it's happening? What about people en route to the site? Especially if they're a regular visitor (estates/IT/catering/HR etc) who just badges in as usual - they won't have necessarily phoned ahead.

Edited April 24, 2024 by pete

[DrBeaker]

^ The obvious rarely-used bell sound is essential. It must sound noticably different. Not "we'll make the usual noise last a bit longer" as staff will assume someone's messed up bell timings and/or "maybe we're on fire and should assemble on the field".

....

 

Yep +1 for this point in particular.

 

The sheer AMOUNT of times the bell hasn't gone off, gone off at the wrong time, gone off mid-lesson, too late, too early, gone off as they haven't changed the times with daylight saving times etc is an absolute joke.

 

Guess which team is responsible for making sure that happens and it ain't IT.

 

Not being funny how hard is to make a bell go off at a certain time. That used to happen BEFORE computers, servers, the internet etc.

 

Otherwise people will be used to the incompetence and mistakes, simply ignore it when they need it the most.

 

Joke but Star Trek had it right with Red, Yellow and Blue Alerts. You knew exactly what was going on based on the sound and colour.

[Syman_a]

When i started here, the lockdown signal was "five rings of the fire bell" When i said this was not in line with the recommendations i was met with blank faces.

 

We had an ongoing incident outside our school where the "PLAN" was put in place. One class thought it was a fire alarm and evacuted.

 

As you can imagine, this was not ideal ( no one was in any danger)

 

Following the inevitable debrief. We had sounders added to the intruder alarm, that can be activated through the panic buttons in the main office.

 

This is a 2FE primary school

[CHiLL]

We only have one type of bell throughout the school and do not have the money for another unique bell to be installed. Instead, we do multiple rings of the class change bell to indicate a lockdown scenario and also place a popup via NetSupport Notify that a lockdown has been initiated. A second popup is sent when the event is over. All external and door (including offices and classrooms) have roller blinds on the inside which the people inside must roll down once lockdown has started and the door locked from the inside. Staff are instructed that the blinds are only for this purpose, as from a safeguarding perspective, we can't have staff effectively hidden away with students (I've seen people do this innocently for privacy in meetings, or to avoid distractions from corridors, but they are spoken to by management to not do it again).

[Jawloms]

A distinct lockdown bell, that staff and students are well versed in;

A procedure in place - e.g. lock classroom doors, students to put phones away, etc;

Technical procedures - engage all maglocks with no override other than fire, email to staff, messages to parents;

A recognised bell for the end of a lockdown, and staff duties at this point;

SLT procedures - call the police, run bravely into harm’s way, send someone else bravely into harm’s way, or other responsibilities

 

It’s that kind of thing. Our policy is being updated so we’ll be going through all this again. The bell to notify and the practising with the students are the really important ones. Remember that a fire alarm always trumps everything too.

 

Messaging parents is a dodgy one, and I'm not convinced what the right/wrong was is of doing this. Just keep in mind that if you message them a load might turn up and then potentially you or police have crowd control on your list too.

[Rob_D]

We have wedges in each classroom to provide additional security if someone manages to bypass the room locks (they're a remnant of the "doors open for airflow" policy during covid, that's been incorporated into the lockdown policy).

Bell wise, we've gone with a pre-recorded tanoy announcement.

 

Anecdote time:

Back when I was in school, the fire alarm and lesson change were physically different bells, but both just used physical chimes that had an almost identical ring and a lot of them were put right next to each other for easer installation. One time the "bell" started going off just before 3, so we all start packing up ready to go when the teacher says "wait, which bell is ringing?" we stop, listen and a bunch of us point to the fire alarm (although most of us don't know that's what it is). Teacher quickly bundles us all out.

[NegativeKillDeath]

Messaging parents is a dodgy one, and I'm not convinced what the right/wrong was is of doing this. Just keep in mind that if you message them a load might turn up and then potentially you or police have crowd control on your list too.

 

Always tricky and you will not be able to stop the parents finding out as students will send messages from their phones.

[3s-gtech]

Messaging parents is a dodgy one, and I'm not convinced what the right/wrong was is of doing this. Just keep in mind that if you message them a load might turn up and then potentially you or police have crowd control on your list too.

If we don't message/communicate with them, they'll find out anyway and be VERY cross. Experience.

[lparry]

Out of curiosity, how have you done your tannoy announcement? Our system here is an older non-computer model but one of our steps plays a recording via a MIC input and a raspberry PI hosting a web server for sound files.

[3s-gtech]

In theory, you could integrate that to be automatic by using a relay from your lockdown alarm to the Raspberry Pi. It's something I'm reluctant to homebrew too much due to the liability - I want our system to email staff automatically and that should be fairly simple. Should.

[Jawloms]

If we don't message/communicate with them, they'll find out anyway and be VERY cross. Experience.

 

Absolutely, and I am by no means saying "don't", just that it's a dodgy area that needs handling very carefully.

[PotNoodleTech]

I think the messaging part depends entirely on the event. It's pretty hard to know what the best thing to do is but you can not keep any event secret as the kids are texting literally 10 seconds into a lockdown so your better off being honest about it.

 

If it's something that happened in the local area and everything is ok jut precautionary lockdown then I would inform parents.

 

If machetti man is literally on premisies then you've got much more important things to be doing than worrying about communicating with parents.

 

What does your LA policy/guidance say?

 

One thing for sure its all a bit worrying - a school not far away just had a knife attack and 2 other local schools fake bomb threats. And that's just this week!

[Michael]

Three steps I've observed adopted -

 

- Where possible, use different ringing patterns with the existing fire alarm system - fire always on - lock down, three bursts one after the other etc...

- Use your telephony to call all handsets internally

- Adopt a codename as to not worry younger pupils

[Dos_Box]

I do have to ask, how easy is to for you to reconfigure the schools alarm system? Can some do it or are others hard locked?

[Michael]

I do have to ask, how easy is to for you to reconfigure the schools alarm system? Can some do it or are others hard locked?

 

In my experience in most cases you can't. Someone has to physically press a button at the panel.

 

I suspect all brand new fire alarm panels probably have this feature built in.

[sbrown88]

Hi, we use Vivi for screensharing and all the screens can also turn into a visual emergency alert that we can tailor to the situation. it links to our Paxton system too and emails our warden group

[PotNoodleTech]

Hi, we use Vivi for screensharing and all the screens can also turn into a visual emergency alert that we can tailor to the situation. it links to our Paxton system too and emails our warden group

 

That vivi sounds interesting especially as we already have paxton.

[Dos_Box]

In my experience in most cases you can't. Someone has to physically press a button at the panel.

 

I suspect all brand new fire alarm panels probably have this feature built in.

 

Sorry, I meant if it is easy to reconfigure the alarm, not how it is activated.

[Agalma]

Three steps I've observed adopted -

- Use your telephony to call all handsets internally

- Adopt a codename as to not worry younger pupils

Just wanted to touch on the combination of these two here

 

Utilization of the phone system/whatever other ability there is to provide the information for the full school is vital depending on the purpose of the lockdown. Especially in the case of the "crazy machete" type situation mentioned earlier: an internal issue needs to be communicated fully and as widely as possible with as much information given as clearly as possible for people to be able to make the best decisions they can.

 

Codenames are not a good system as there are too many variables at play where they fail: is every single individual in the school at that moment someone who has been provided information and training on the codename variants and their meanings? There are too many people who could be in the school for any number of legitimate reasons for that day alone that do not know the codename system for that school. Instead it is always better to provide as much information as possible and relevant/important to the situation in as clear and succinct a manner as possible. Is the lockdown due to an issue in the surrounding area that does not directly impact the school's ability to function outside of restricting outside access? Or is there something that is happening and teachers will need to move students from a specific portion of the building while others remain in place?

 

Any lockdown is going to be different from any other lockdown; creating a system that relies on fixed "If X do Y" creates issues immediately when something does not fit perfectly into those scenarios and causes people to have to process through their mental Rolodex of what they are supposed to do instead of hearing the information and responding accordingly.

 

Last piece to add on: does your system work when the office itself is unable to send the alert? Are the teacher's aware of what the process is for enacting the lockdown scenario? If you are using the phone system is it centralized to only a singular point being able to make the call to all handsets or is each handset able to do this? Have the teachers practiced making a call like that if they ever need to due to the incident originating in their class or area?

[DavR]

We've got NetSupport Notify configured via vb script so that we have a big red button on certain users desktops marked INITIATE LOCKDOWN, which when pressed messages all workstations with an alarm noise and a message to enable lockdown, and another big green button LIFT LOCKDOWN that does a similar thing in reverse.

 

Between you me and the gatepost though, our emergency and lockdown plans were made over five years ago, never reviewed, we've never had a drill, and I doubt any new staff are even aware of what the procedure is. At this point I think pressing the big red button would just cause confusion and distress.

[CHiLL]

We've got NetSupport Notify configured via vb script so that we have a big red button on certain users desktops marked INITIATE LOCKDOWN, which when pressed messages all workstations with an alarm noise and a message to enable lockdown, and another big green button LIFT LOCKDOWN that does a similar thing in reverse.

 

Between you me and the gatepost though, our emergency and lockdown plans were made over five years ago, never reviewed, we've never had a drill, and I doubt any new staff are even aware of what the procedure is. At this point I think pressing the big red button would just cause confusion and distress.

That sounds like a good idea, would you be able to share the script you're using to trigger the message?

[PotNoodleTech]

We've got NetSupport Notify configured via vb script so that we have a big red button on certain users desktops marked INITIATE LOCKDOWN, which when pressed messages all workstations with an alarm noise and a message to enable lockdown, and another big green button LIFT LOCKDOWN that does a similar thing in reverse.

 

Between you me and the gatepost though, our emergency and lockdown plans were made over five years ago, never reviewed, we've never had a drill, and I doubt any new staff are even aware of what the procedure is. At this point I think pressing the big red button would just cause confusion and distress.

 

Hi how did you set this up? We literally have big red button on the paxton system for lock down and have desperately ben trying to get netsupoort and paxton to talk with no luck so far