Daily Fire Registers

[forkies]

Depends what school you are at I guess, our registers are rarely not done, and so far very accurate. As for crowd control again it's down to the school, again luckily we have good staff who keep the students quite while evacuating and during roll call, all stood in form groups. I can see this being a problem at schools lacking behaviour management. At the end of the day it is going to be different at different schools and under different authorities as everywhere has different opinions.

 

Going back to the original post, I just calculated we spend £55 a year on fire drill registers, that is printing registers every morning for every form group. So at the end of the day, not that bad. Compared to £150 for a cheap iPod x5 plus group call emerge at £x a year. If it works...

[jmak]

On the advice of a fire officer we have a laminated list of names in each class. When the register has been taken each morning and afternoon, marks are made against any pupils absent and the total number of children present is written on. The first check after evacuation is whether you have the correct number of children - much quicker than taking a register in a noisy playground. If you have people missing, then you do a register to establish who you're looking for.

 

Edit: we're planning on all teachers having windows tablets running the SIMS Teacher App, so will have the option of offline electronic fire registers, but I still reckon the laminated sheet will be quicker!

Edited February 24, 2016 by jmak
Afterthought

[Ketlane]

The solutions I've seen all rely on some printed list. The most economical (and quick to produce) is a set of class lists which are at least semi-permanent (e.g. every classroom has a clipboard with pen by the door for staff to grab) and a daily absent list. The absent list should be the responsibility of some group of admin staff and they are tasked with getting it to the person in charge of the headcount. These will work fine during lesson time. The practical problem comes outside lesson time - in the lunch break, for example, when some people, staff and pupils, may well disappear off-site, legitimately or otherwise. Also for sixth forms with study lessons which may be in many places around the school and possibly unsupervised.

Making the fire drills competitive between years, classes, departments, whatever seems to work well in getting people out and counted and reported.

The issue we never managed to solve was accounting for staff - when some might be working in several places during a day - and worse accounting for visitors.

From an IT perspective, I think the issue has to be passed back to whoever is the school's Fire Safety Officer or H&S Officer; offer some solutions and then let them decide. In the light of the real possibility of the fire causing IT systems to fail, or mains power failing, I think the final headcount needs to be done in hard copy. It's possible to print class lists small enough to fit on a laminated piece of paper the size of a credit card, and still be readable - another thought that might help.

[Knil92]

what some of our schools do is print off a blank register and them laminate it. Each morning the teacher takes this register alongside the normal register. In the event of a fire they grab the laminated register to use. Because its laminated, it means they can just wipe it clean the next day.

[bfelton]

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread but I was wondering if someone is aware of a way around and issue I have come across... We are using the blank registers combined with absence report and signing out sheets method, the issue is the absence report doesn't include students out on school trips as this is a V code which isn't an absence. Any ideas?