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 remember doing lockdown at primary school in the '80's.....we were told in case a fox got onto school grounds :)

All my dc have done some sort of lockdown drills. Hid under desks or in cupboards etc..

yes, it’s reasonable to move people out of the way of a low threat like a cow, but hiding under desks?

It's not the lowing that's the threat, it's the size and speed...

I assume that the exact instructions would be modified as appropriate to the actual situation and most wouldn't require barricading and hiding just getting wherever they're meant to go calmly.

I’ve seen several posters reply to this saying ‘so you are doing them’ when the post clearly states they are not. They aren’t practising. It’s just that IF it were needed the process would be the same as end of break.

That particular poster WAS doing them though......

Having procedures in place is very different from practicing lockdown drills. All schools should have security procedures in place [1] however the guidance says you 'should' test plans, not you 'must'. This is where it differs from annual fire drills which are legally mandated. As many on this thread have posted, including teachers, this simply doesn't happen in all schools.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-and-college-security/school-and-college-security#testing-security-plans

True, of course the cow isn't going to break into the building and attack anyone @cantsleepwontcry. I'm quite entertained by the image in my head of an angry cow stalking the corridors though 😁

But... there are only so many different alarms you can use and so many different protocols. Most schools have one for a fire drill (evacuation) and one for lockdown, regardless of the reason for the lockdown. I'm overseas and our lockdown procedure would cover us for an intruder (although as the classrooms have full windows to the outside, and huge windows to the corridor, I'd be fucked as I'm ground floor so there is nowhere to conceal yourself!) However, they've only ever been used for a snake on campus, as far as I'm aware. But that one bell signifies everyone immediately entering the nearest available building, staying in the classroom etc.

I've also done drills in another country for earthquakes. Opposite of intruder drill, where you sit underneath the windows in order to (hopefully) not be seen from outside; for the earthquake drill we had to move to the middle of the room and hide under tables, as far away from windows as possible.

I do understand it's an emotive issue, though, because in the UK we only associate this sort of thing with an active shooter drill.

No it isn’t. The link posted earlier made it clear it was an option, based on the school’s own risk assessment.

Not that relevant to my comments about schools in the U.K.

Well, an angry/drunk parent would likely be at reception and dealt with there. If not I’d lock the door. I don’t really need to practice this. If a child is flipping tangles it’s either in my room, in which case children quite naturally move away from that sort of thing, or it’s not, in which case it doesn’t affect my class. Why do I need a drill for that?

Working in ‘hundreds of schools’ suggests some sort of training provider - is it providing lockdown training, perhaps? In which case it’s a bit of an unrepresentative sample.
35 years. Schools in various areas. Loads of teacher friends - between us quite possibly hundreds of schools. Lockdown in one I’m aware of - and that was more theoretical than actual. I never actually experienced a drill, just knew it was a possibility.
im not saying it’s not something to think about, but many of the scenarios people on here are saying would require lockdown procedures really don’t. And since lockdown is effectively ‘staying in’ I’m not sure why it needs practising that much.

Because you aren’t just saying ‘go out’ in a fire drill, fairly obviously.
theyneed to go to a specific place and line up in a specific way. A lockdown is staying out or going to where you would normally go. It’s not a special manoeuvre.

No they weren’t. It clearly said so. It said they would use the same procedure as the end of break and therefore it didn’t need practice.

@cardibach

Not that relevant to my comments about schools in the U.K.

It's relevant in that school lockdown is practiced across the world?

We all know that @OCaptain
I was saying, as part of a discussion about UK schools, that in the UK schools I’d worked in it wasn’t.

Sorry - wrong thread

Not a training provider but a supply teacher so quite an objective sample. Most schools outline their fire evacuation and invacuation process upon my arrival so I'm familiar with both. I'd say it's rarer to attend a school without a lockdown policy than it is to attend one with in my experience.

For nearly 20 years! In different schools too in both London and Manchester. It’s honestly never even occurred to me before now.

@cardibach but there are different invacuation levels. Local schools seem to have the following plan; level one which would be go into your class, level 2 would be keeping quiet and drawing blinds and level 3 would be an under the desk scenario. If there was a chemical leak in the area, you would need to go into class and windows closed but could carry on lessons and certainly wouldn’t need to barricade the door and hide under your desk

sounds sensible to me! sounds like the school is making sure it’s prepared!

Better safe than sorry. Life skills.

I’m in and out of lots of schools which I know well and none have any of these procedures in place or practice drills, so can’t be that common as everyone suggests. Same as the ‘all schools must have high walls around them’ myth.

35 years teaching full time and now I’m a supply teacher. Still only 1 with drills for ‘lockdown’.

And most of those don’t require anyone to practise anything. Just tell the teacher to shut the windows, not let anyone out and crack on.

Tell you what’s really bothering me - the nonsense word ‘invacuation’. Total misunderstanding of etymology so meaningless. Evacuation comes from the stem evacuare "to empty". You can’t just make up silly opposites.

Could you not consider it a portmanteau word, like Brexit?

Of course you can! I'd never heard the term before but it was immediately obvious what it was supposed to mean.