Does your primary school have lockdowns drills?

[Frostythesnowman1]

I have twins in year 1

10 minutes before pick up we get a message to say they have carried out a lockdown drill

no warning, no context, no letting parents know how they explained it to 5 year olds so parents can do the same.

apparently they have it every year but “missed” last year so this is our first experience

Every school I ever worked in, in 20 years, (and that was a lot of schools as I was peripatetic!) did a lockdown drill, but very few called it that. Especially years ago.

Most used the dog in the playground. Others used other animals (one near a zoo had a full on escaped animals procedure), a stranger or a fire somewhere near.

Kids don't bat an eyelid at it generally. One HT actually said one time that things like that were always much easier before parents get involved 😂

Yes mine both did. It sounded quite scary but the school didn’t notify the parents. It’s a shame schools have to do these drills to be honest.

@ARichtGoodDram I think most things at schools are easier before parents get involved!

@Sherrystrull well from a friend that worked there, they put it into practice due to what could have been a very real risk, police responded quickly with a large presence, actual issue was sorted out very quickly. But neighbours to the school had filmed the police arriving with blues on and put it on social media. Hundreds of parents turned up, blocking all surrounding roads with their cars then loads of rumours were spread like wildfire that XYZ had happened, causing more parents and press to turn up then a journalist jumped over a neighbour's garden fence on to school grounds causing an actual intruder on site. This chaos triggered further time in lockdown and the rumors and chaos caused the other schools in a 3 mile radius to go into a light lockdown. Obviously the nature of lockdowns were those inside didn't actually have a clue what was going on other than what was being texted them on phones causing further spreading of rumours and panic.

That sounds absolutely horrific. Thank you for sharing.

We do it.
Very rural, very safe. Small community with quite a few elderly folk near the school who are well known to the children.
We do get a local dog on the playground occasionally so the kids are used to coming indoors for that (he’s not friendly).
When they ask why we shut the blinds we say that the school is where the air ambulance might land and Betty in the village deserves privacy if she’s poorly enough to need medical attention from
the helicopter. She won’t need all of us staring at her. They accept that. No stress, no drama.
We do it in full because we need to check we haven’t overlooked a door or something that then gets left open.
When we’ve done real lock downs it’s always been for a dog and we don’t bother with blinds then.

My kids first school did it last week, planning for a big dog or swarm of bees.

we knew as we had an email to say it would happen that week but not the exact date

My old primary school fitted very simple locks to all classrooms last year in readiness for any lock downs. That was the first year we had a practice. We also had to have a secret word to use if we needed to lock down. We had to have a different sound to the fire alarm and the system was too old for multiple tones. We also used a hand bell….. This was a large 2 form entry school.

I’m fascinated reading this. Unfortunately the word “lockdown” brings back the horror of 2020 (a totally separate topic, I know).

I remember that at my primary school in the 1980s, it was usual practice to lock the classroom door when we were not in there; we had sharper scissors in those days, perhaps it was so that we didn’t murder each other with them.

Yes they did and do so in secondary school, they say it’s incase there is a dangerous dog on site and don’t frighten the children

We did these in my old school occasionally. It was a case of getting all of the children away from windows and into safe spaces quickly. Also checking names and classes from lists etc just like a fire drill. We never used to go into detail with the children about possible scenarios as that wasn't the point of the exercise. It was more to prepare staff for an event so they would be able to react appropriately.
Better to run through these things than not, surely! Parents are not told when a fire drill is expected so I don't see why any other kind of safety drill is any different really.

My DS had one this week at school. HDecame home and told me, calling it an intruder alarm.

They didn't let the parents know in advance.

I'm glad they do it, but I was shocked when he first told me.

A school near me put itself into lockdown when a very troubled young man kicked off outside school.

No.

My children’s schools have never done this and am not aware of any schools who do this.

we are in Scotland

You would think with Dunblane Scottish schools would do this

Do you expect a warning for a fire drill?

Doubtful.

So why do you want a warning for a lock down?

Don't know of any school that's done it- various parts of Scotland

When that car crashed into the school in Wimbledon I wonder whether other local schools went into lockdown

Last year there was a nasty car crash near our school. The air ambulance landed on the playground. We needed a way to get and keep all the children inside. Good job we had a lock down procedure.

A lockdown would not have prevented that.

It's always can invacuation in the schools I've worked in. I usually explain it as the opposite of a fire drill. Fire drill is something unsafe inside so we go out; invac is something unsafe outside so we come in.

We've had to invac many times: a naked drunk man trying to climb the fence, an angry dad trying to get to his daughter (he wasn't allowed near her), the local tyre fitters set on fire and the smoke was horrendous, deer on the playground, grass snake in the middle of the school field. To be fair, the last 2 were more to keep the deer and the snake safe from curious children!

I'd never been aware of this until today, funnily enough. One of my year 5 pupils told me when he came for his music lesson that they'd been practising hiding under desks "in case there was ever a snake in the playground". He was very scornful about the likelihood of this happening in Devon. I said something bland about well, schools all have to have the same rules, that's the law. Perhaps a school in a different country had a problem with a snake once so they made everyone do the same thing.

He was entirely unbothered and none of my other students mentioned it, but this coincided with newly tightened security procedures which were actually put in place from yesterday - today was my first experience of them. External doors to buildings that children and staff constantly move between all day are now only opened by code or physical key, whereas they have always been unlocked before. All gates to the school grounds are always locked, but (while entirely appropriate) this is very new in my experience in small rural Devon primaries.

I work in a P.S. I have never heard of this in U.K.

Yes we're in SE London and the DC primary school have done lockdown drills

DC1 told me about it once or twice

Parents were not informed, didn't really expect to be

I attended primary school in SE London in the late 80s/early 90s and I clearly remember drills where we left the building and went into the school field...and being made to face away from the school building etc

This was at a time of IRA bombings- bombs in dustbins at station (I remember at London Victoria) I don't remember being particularly alarmed about the drills we did, it was just one of those things

This makes more sense to me. A cow, dog or air ambulance they'd all want to look out the window!