Attendance - Fire DRills

[Anorak]

Hi.

 

Networked or web based MIS provide for input of attendance data direct from the classroom rather than by the Class registers.

 

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who uses direct input what your procedures are, for taking a roll call, for fire drills , and god forbid in a real emergency, when no manual registers exist ?

 

It has been suggested that the registers are printed out from the MIS every session ? - this would go down very well with our hard pressed office staff !!!

[webman]

If the emergency evacuation bell sounds, our attendance officer just prints out the registers and then leaves the building like everyone else. We're using SIMS.net.

[ConTheITGuy]

We are using PARS.net here. We have been running off the registers in a blind panic in the event of a drill until now. However, PARS does have a fire module, and I have just bought a shiny new Tablet PC to run it on - though I haven't tried it yet

 

Andy

[Anorak]

Thanks for the replies so far

 

Can see that printing off the registers is OK for a planned fire drill but not for every Registration period (let alone Lesson Attendance)

 

Not sure that if in a real emergency - the leaving of a "sacrificial lamb" to stay and print off the class registers for 1900 pupils is a safe option.

Chances may be that the Network is down , the server and router have gone down or the printer may be out of paper !!

 

Perhaps the old Class registers should be completed as well as electronically ? ;-)

 

Will have to check with DCFS/. LA Attendance guidance perhaps ? - no douibt this is years out of date !!

[TechMonkey]

Unions would kick up a fuss if 'real' registers had to be taken as well as it is duplication and they get very fussy! I'm not sure if anything has been sorted here, for drills we do the panic print off, beyond that I'm not sure. As others have said I would be wary of relying on an electronic access version as if the fire were to take out infrastructure then it fails.

 

But I have no answers so pretty useless sorry!

[webman]

Locally connected printer with high PPM, UPS, always filled with paper... what much more can we do?

[Ric_]

We took advice from the local fire brigade and LEA when installing our electronic registration system. We were informed that in the even of a fire we should simply evacuate the building.

 

We were told that there was no need to print a register and do a rollcall because the fire brigade MUST do a thorough search of the building upon arriving on site.

[FN-GM]

Well it would help if they know who they are looking for and with a register they maybe a clue were they are.

[Ric_]

@FN-Greatermanchester: You would think but that is what they told us. Besides, who's to say that kids won't disappear between the classroom and assembling on the yard?

[FN-GM]

fair point

[Muhaimin]

This is a question I have always wondered myself.

 

My first incling would be a tablet PC connected wirelessly to the server where the registers can be checked - however in order for this to be fool-proof - i think in addition it would be good to put the server in a fireproof housing/cuboard/safe (gives at least upto 1 hour protection in some cases)

 

However, we are still relying on electronics. Therefore the following solution would suit all...

 

Teachers take registers in classrooms through their MIS system which is linked to the admin office MIS system. The admin office check their MIS system to ensure that all registers are complete and then confirm thier registers - doing so they can also print out the registers for thier Dinners/Attendance and also to keep a paper record. This will then be avilable for fire drills.

[Muhaimin]

This is a question I have always wondered myself.

 

My first incling would be a tablet PC connected wirelessly to the server where the registers can be checked - however in order for this to be fool-proof - i think in addition it would be good to put the server in a fireproof housing/cuboard/safe (gives at least upto 1 hour protection in some cases)

 

However, we are still relying on electronics. Therefore the following solution would suit all...

 

Teachers take registers in classrooms through their MIS system which is linked to the admin office MIS system. The admin office check their MIS system to ensure that all registers are complete and then confirm thier registers - doing so they can also print out the registers for thier Dinners/Attendance and also to keep a paper record. This will then be avilable for fire drills.

[kylewilliamson]

doesnt allow for people leaving and entering site..

 

PARS had a fire module at some point in the past - you kept it connected in it's dock synced up, and then say the receptiontist grabs it on the way out.

[laserblazer]

Interesting point. I used this as an argument for keeping our manual registration but one solution springs to mind if it is possible to get SIMS to automatically produce a Register Report which could be saved on-line. It would then be possible to print it out from a safe building.

 

Edit: I've just realised a potential problem with this and that's arrivals after the report has been printed but in our school, they have to report to reception, so I suppose their names could go in a book.

[plexer]

think in addition it would be good to put the server in a fireproof housing/cuboard/safe

 

Hows that going to work without frying the server?

 

Ben

[FN-GM]

It might the server that catches fire and burns the place down.

[michaelf]

The idea of having a tablet or laptop setup to sync the registers and then grab that in the event of an emergency seems pretty good since its not reliant on any existing infrastructure.

 

The other idea my boss suggested was rather than printing off a complete register each lesson, simply to print off a list of absentees. This has the advantage of being much shorter than a complete register but can still be compared with a complete class list to see who is supposed to be here.

[kxv2020]

We print off every morning - after the first 10 minutes of Period 1 and in the afternoon after registration from SIMS.net - that way we covered and we just grab that!

[jcollings]

We took advice from the local fire brigade and LEA when installing our electronic registration system. We were informed that in the even of a fire we should simply evacuate the building.

 

We were told that there was no need to print a register and do a rollcall because the fire brigade MUST do a thorough search of the building upon arriving on site.

 

We were told the same thing

[GrumbleDook]

Advice from all fire agencies for public or commercial buildings is to evacuate everyone, do not rely on electronic measures for attendance and that the paper signing in/out books are purely there to give advice / notice that there may be particular areas of the buildings that need investigating first.

 

*no* document or record is taken at 100% face value at the scene of a fire or other event where emergency services attend, it can only be used for information that is at most 50% accurate.

 

It is also illegal for a company / body to state in procedures or contract that articles *must* be collected in the event of a fire. The most they can say is that 'if it is safe to do so' or 'personnel in the room at the time of the alarm sounding should try to ensure that the following are collected' ... this is a basic H&S rule.

 

All staff in a school should also know who their fire officer / controller within the school is and that person should talk with the NM at least once a year as a risk assessment is completed each year and servers rooms are generally classified as a high-density area for electrical hazards.

[john]

All staff in a school should also know who their fire officer / controller within the school is and that person should talk with the NM at least once a year as a risk assessment is completed each year and servers rooms are generally classified as a high-density area for electrical hazards.

Do I talk to myself then if I'm the fire officer?

[laserblazer]

I thought it was a job requirement for NMs to talk to themselves.

[Bromcom_John]

Due to the nature of the emergency situation it is not advisable to rely on anything that needs wireless communication to be active at the time of the fire. As previous users have stated it may very well be that hardware that started the fire, or at least the fire may very well damage the comms network.

To that end here is how the Bromcom wireless system copes with the scenario.

Each user has an assigned fire drill group, we find that most schools elect for this to be the tutor group but other procedures exist, the user sets this group on their PDA.

Every time that user calls a register on their PDA the system also retrieves the most up to date attendance mark for the students in that users fire drill group. This information is then cached on the PDA.

In the event of a fire the users take their PDA devices out of the building with them.

They then perform the roll-call by selecting the option to do a Fire drill register which retrieves the information from the PDA's memory.

 

This way they have a list of attendance that is as up to date as the last session marked by that teacher and it is not reliant on being able to retrieve a signal from a potentially fire damaged communications infrastructure.

[maniac]

Must admit the bromcom system is the only electronic registration system I've come across with a dedicated firedrill procedure. Most others are exclusively web based, so cache nothing locally. Just hope that the newer versions of your product are better than what I was using around 2 years ago, which was an administrative nitemate!

 

Mike.

[K.C.Leblanc]

We don't do registers at all after a firebell. Instead teachers have to report which rooms they know to have been emptied.

 

We have to do it this way becuase we share buildings with the school next door. So it's imposible to keep track of students that could be in either school.