Lockdown drills in UK schools

[RoseslnTheHospital]

These were mentioned on another thread, and I genuinely had never heard of a school in the UK regularly doing lockdown drills with their children. In the manner of the active shooter drills in the USA. Apparently there's an official government example of a drill routine and policy on the gov.uk site.

So, I was wondering, do you know if your children's school do these drills, or if they have a published policy on their website?

DDs primary does them (state, academy). They pretend there's a dog loose in the school. She finds it quite fun.
The alarm went off once for it by accident (not a drill), all the kids followed the protocol immediately - teacher said she was impressed.

My kids school does them. The older kids know them as intruder drills. The younger kids get the unknown dog story.

I’m glad they do them - it saved me from having to train the kids myself.

Our local primary started doing this after Dunblaine (we're not in Scotland). I believe the thinking behind it was that there are a lot of licensed gun holders (a large farming population), plus there was an incident involving a man waving a gun around whilst walking down the road (he ended up being sectioned iIrc).

American drills are not just for 'active shooters'.

My DCs did tornado and fire drills, and there were lockdown drills to cover all sorts of emergencies, including armed intruders, but also related to events outside the school - freight train crash or derailment/ escape of gas nearby, bank robbery nearby, coyote on grounds - and hazards like wild animals in the building (raccoons carry rabies here). We don't have snakes in this region but they're a hazard in some places.

The only time there was an actual lockdown in all the years from 1995 to 2019 when my DCs were in local schools was the occasion of an armed bank robbery in the early afternoon a few blocks from my DCs' primary school, with suspects at large.

It's far better that there's a plan that prioritises safety than to find yourself winging it as a teacher.

Seems like another way to scare our kids, as if the previous few years hasn't been enough. It really isn't enough to just presume that the kids will be unphased by all this.

Ds left school in 2020 but they instigated lockdown drills a couple of years before he left.

Several local schools have had to instigate lockdown. Off the top of my head one was an ex student brandishing a knife outside the school, one was a parent acting in a threatening manner and one was a nearby police incident (might have been knifepoint robbery where they were searching for the offender).

Dog in the playground drill

Surely that's giving kids a fear of dogs, which are everywhere!

My kids went to a Jewish primary, as far as I know they never did any lockdown drills, but that may be changing there now, sadly.

DS has never done them, either at primary or at secondary where he is now. Just regular fire drills where they all assemble on the playground. We used to have bomb drills at school which were different from the fire drills - you had to leave your desks open (the old fashioned type with the built-in seat and a tilting desk lid), presumably so to make it easier for the bomb squad to search classrooms.

@MatthewsMumFromTikTok they don’t make lockdown drills scary, they may explain to the younger children that the dog might be scared of all the children so that is why the children can’t be in the playground not because the dog might bite them

It's not a legal requirement.

Yes, annual drills in both primary and secondary school. SW London.

Just an update on this. My 6 year old son came home this week saying how they practiced being locked in the classroom cupboard, in case of emergency. This really shocked me. I had no idea schools in the UK did this?

How big is that cupboard????

I used to stuff my class into the stockroom when we did lockdown drills. It was a big room with a lockable door.

We are rural, My dc school used to do the dog in the playground drill . Came in handy once when cows actually got into the school grounds. No panic, everyone knew what to do.

We had someone entering site with a weapon and needed a full lockdown as a result a while back.

It's sadly becoming more common.