Kids doing 'lockdown' exercises in school

[cantsleepwontcry]

1st day back yesterday for my year 12

Comes to tell me they did a lockdown exercise.... teacher blocked the door with chairs and they basically had to hide under desks, behind furniture until the threat was over

I'm quite surprised and upset that they feel the need to teach this in UK schools now.

I posted this on the last thread about this and will post it again here:

It’s not as rare as some posters seem to believe. It seems to occur roughly
twice a month in the UK.

It often won’t make national news though as usually the suspects are apprehended without any injuries occurring. (If we had more guns over here I’m sure it would be a different story). So unless you are local you probably won’t hear about it.

A quick google showed the following schools who had to go into emergency lockdown after intrusion in 2023 so far:

March - Slough - intruder armed with a knife arrested in secondary school

March - Powys - school put into lockdown after intruder scales fence

April - Kineton in Warwick - masked men in balaclavas on school grounds

April - armed intruder apprehended in a Somerset school

May - Benfield school Newcastle - three men in school grounds

June - Devon - two students and teacher attacked and critically injured. - this one DID make national news - due to the injuries.

So actually, I would be concerned if your child’s school are NOT doing these drills.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4821731-school-intruder-training

I still remember when I was in primary school and they found an unexploded bomb when digging up something. They took it to the harbour I think.

Anyway I remember us having to hide under the desks as presumably they drove the bomb past. The police had megaphones. It was very exciting.

A cow in the playground wouldn’t phase most kids at our local school. In fact there are so many farmer’s kids that they would probably be able to deal with it. We get escapee cows all the time here. Biggest threat is probably drunk/drug/aggressive parents.

@PuttingDownRoots I think you’re missing the point. No one is suggesting you’d just ignore the animal, or try to pet it. On the off chance a random and potentially dangerous animal was on a school property, and it also happened to be break time or outside classes, it would be wise to call everyone inside, or at least on the other side of a fence to the said area. Bolting yourselves indoors and hiding under desks, however, is clearly not necessary (even with a bull!)

The problem is that these days no one can deal with things using logic and common sense. They have to be taught a set of actions that are likely OTT for the situation.

We also don't have the 10 foot high fences around all schools which many posters seem to think are compulsory.

I’ve been mystified by this fence thing. 50 years ago my school had no fence at all. I checked on Streetview. It still has no fence at all. England BTW

They're not saying it shouldn't happen. They're saying they don't happen in their schools. None of the 3 schools DS12 has attended has these. Just normal fire drills.

We used to do nuclear threat drills when I was at school.

I was also 100% certain my son’s school didn’t do these drills - then I asked him if he ever had to practice hiding in school and turns out yes they do, the teacher locks the door and closes the blinds and they have to sit quietly - they practice every year like fire drill!

It obviously was done in such a way that he wasn’t at all phased by it and was so un-bothered it didn’t even occur to him to tell me about it.

Cattle do occasionally end up where they shouldn't though. And if you'd ever been chased by a discombobulated lost bullock you might not find the comments quite as funny.

Me too.
Ive never done this as a pupil or a teacher.

I did make my classes do an earthquake drill but that was just a bit of fun teaching about earthquakes.

Oof when I think about how some used to share keys - so they wouldn’t be able to lock or unlock the doors.

Yes I strongly suspect most schools do practice invacuation drills but as I said above they barely register to most kids as it's just not that exciting and therefore they don't think it's something worth sharing.

They do this at least once a year at our school. The alarm is silent and comes through on all the computers. It’s been properly used once when a man being chased by police left over the fence and ran through the building. He was armed with a knife. Afterwards the school head went off and bought ice cream for everyone!! 😀

We have a house with a long driveway that is surrounded by fields. During the summer, we had about 20 horny bullocks break into our driveway by trampling over a damaged fence. They were pretty big and were trying to get to the young heifers in the field on the other side of the drive. (Two different farms)
Imagine the noise and bellowing!!

My DS 13yrs happened to have two of his friends visiting at the time and they’re both from cattle farming families, so the two lads organised themselves, grabbed large stick things and herded the bullocks back into the field. I managed to get hold of the farmer who looks after the bullocks and by the time she turned up, they were all back in the field and the lads were trying to put the fences back up.

Kids from rural farming areas are often very practical and used to looking after themselves from a young age, and would likely look at you as if you’re insane if you suggested they hid under a desk because of a loose animal in the playground, even the 6yr olds. 😂😂

My kids have done these for years. At primary it was used once for real when there was a suspected gunman in the local area (though not in the school and turns out he didn't have a gun in the end either).

Cow might be a bit silly... butvwhat about a bull? I'm just a townie, but hear bulls are a bit more volatile...

We had a bullock get loose at a village show. It caused chaos. Stalls tipped over and people running everywhere. I was about 14 at the time and thought it was hilarious.

But they're saying it doesn't happen because they live in a rural area. As though that makes them immune to emergencies. Invacuation drills are useful regardless of a school's location, as emergencies don't just happen in towns and cities. However, there seems to a suggestion that the only reason for lockdowns in schools is shootings / stabbings. So there's no need for their nice tiny rural school with a community feel to practice them because that's just a town / city problem.

My children are all used to doing lockdown drills. And we live and attend school in a pretty rural setting, it's not like it's in the city and even there the chances of needing to actually lock down are small.

For those saying ‘What about Dunblane’…

Dunblane drastically changed our gun laws permanently, banning handguns, any kind of automatic weapons etc. bringing draconian penalties for even having a gun etc. all of which makes it highly improbable that we will ever have a US style school shooting.

The reality is someone with a knife or even a legally owned shotgun is not as dangerous. There’s a reason we don’t have 10s of thousands of people killed by guns every year the way the USA does, and it’s not because we’re more moral or better people.

I've been teaching for nearly 25 years. Never done one. I'm in Scotland.

‘Cow might be a bit silly... butvwhat about a bull? ‘

again, why or how are bulls breaking into schools??? But seeing as they don’t have thumbs to open doors I imagine that getting the kids indoors and shutting the door is probably enough to handle a bill.
They aren’t actually that dangerous anyway, providing they aren’t goaded.

But invacuation drills are useful for so much more than just a school shooting situation. As many posters have explained on this thread. No one in this country is doing them because they think a crazy loon with a gun is going to storm into a school.

We live in a very rural area and my kids, now older teens, both did this in primary school.
They called it the tiger drill I think, basically told the kids the practice was incase a circus was travelling nearby and the tiger escaped so they needed to hide from it - quite a nice way of doing it so as not to frighten the little ones.

I remember doing this at school in the 80s/90s.

https://www.kellerberrin.wa.gov.au/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-07/kellerberrin-shooting-grain-silo-police-man-injured/102826106. This is now.

Honestly, in Kellerberrin! No one would think of Kellerberrin needing to lockdown bit today they did.

We’ve kids in the school system for 29 years and none have ever done a lockdown drill

Better to be prepared!