CCTV in schools

[TamiTayorismyparentingguru]

Quick poll - is there CCTV in your DC’s secondary school? (Or your secondary school if you work in one?)

My DS’s school does not have CCTV and says they cannot afford to install it (This is questionable due to other budget allocations which are public knowledge), however having spoken to a few friends who work in other schools in our city they all have CCTV in their schools.

This was obviously not a thing when I was at secondary school in the 90s and I had no idea it was a thing now. It never entered my head until now when my friend first mentioned that their school had it.

So as not to dripfeed; the reason I ask is that my DS’s school has an ongoing behaviour problem (lots of ongoing behaviour problems actually - but one specific one in question here) which has been disrupting classes across the whole school for over a year now. The school has yet to catch the perpetrators and it’s really getting old now. (3 periods (out of 30) and half of 2 lunch times missed in the last week) My friend couldn’t understand why the school hadn’t caught the perpetrators yet due to CCTV and that’s when it transpired that our school doesn’t have it and claims they can’t afford to install it.

So - is it normal in secondary schools to have CCTV?

I think newer schools do, yes. DD's school building opened in 2011 and has CCTV in the public areas. It has proved very useful. IMO it is a good thing to have.

I wondered about the newer vs. older building thing as the first friend I spoke to is in a new build school and our building is old, but then spoke to 2 other friends who teach in schools near us and they are both in older schools (one as old as DS’s school and one built in the 60s/70s I think) and they both have it too.

I think it's highly unlikely that many secondary schools would be able to afford to install CCTV nowadays. It'd be useful though, yes.

My kids school does. Both secondary and primary. And the school I work in does.

We have it where I work, the school isn't new but it fairly big. It's is on all main corridors, but not in classrooms.

My school does (in corridors and open areas, not classrooms).

I'm guessing you're meaning a fire alarm being set off.

Problem is for that you've have to stick a camera at every fire point, which would be a huge numbers.

Ime all CCTV means is that they say "oh yes, we can see something happened" but it's never pointing in the right place or with enough detail to make any difference.