Whilst we hope it will never happen, have you thought about how you’d communicate with staff and pupils across your school if you needed to commence a lockdown protocol as the result of a terror or lone attack?
Mass school shootings and acts of terrorism can often be things that you see on the television and think of as being a million miles away, but if one were to happen at your school it’s vital that you have a protocol in place and that you’re able to react quickly and communicate effectively.
What do you need to have in place?
When we spoke with one of the schools we work with recently they explained; “As an older Victorian school our site is quirky, so if a lockdown protocol has been activated we need to be able to know if all are accounted for without having to move between rooms and buildings. We also need to be able to confirm that the external gates are secure and that certain classrooms have visibility of the entrances that would be blind to the office team.”
Although every school is different in size, layout and approach, these are very common needs in the event of lockdown. You need to be able to communicate quickly and efficiently with every part of the school in order to relay what is happening, what people need to be doing and to share information which may help resolve the situation.
We’ve been helping a number of schools across the region adapt and expand their system to meet their ever changing needs; here are just a few features we suggest exploring for your school.
A tannoy system or phones in your classrooms?
The answer is that at different times you often need both; a tannoy system is great for communicating messages across the whole school in one go, but if you need to contact an individual room or building discretely then you’re going to need individual handsets.
With our phone systems, the phone acts as a phone but when appropriate can also act as part of a tannoy group.
It’s important to highlight that both phone and tannoy can also help to improve the way you communicate on a daily basis; no more walking to classrooms to find a pupil or to contact a staff member, no more long email distribution lists if a message about weather conditions or sports day needs to be quickly dispersed.
The schools we work with are ensuring they’re able to respond to the worst case scenario, whilst also improving their daily communication; saving time and money as a result.
Ensuring staff and pupil safety…
Ensuring the safety of your staff and pupils will always be of vital importance to you, so have you ever considered what would happen if a teacher or pupil were to be attacked in a classroom or somewhere on site? We’re able to link our phone systems to allow teachers to quickly highlight issues through the press of one button. The quickness of response in these situations can often be the difference between a minor incident and a major one.
For more information on how we can help your school respond to serious incidents or just improve your daily communication please give us a call on 01237 420010.
