To think it's very depressing that school children need to learn this

[Eastie77Returns]

DD's school is producing a video showing children what to do in the event there is an intruder in the school and they need to go into 'lockdown'. I found out as she has been asked to take part in the video production.She is in Y7.

DS is in Y4 and he told me they did a practice drill at his primary school where they followed the steps they needed to take in a similar situation.

Honestly it makes me feel very sad. I understand in the current climate it's necessary and in countries like the US it's standard but I never thought I'd see something like this here.

See my posts at 9:21 and 12:44. You’re welcome to disagree, but you seem to require an awful lot of help to understand (or even to find) the points you are disagreeing with.

Whereas school safety drills can only be practised in schools.

I think that’s a fair point (setting aside the attack-normalisation worry), but the risk rates are so different, like 100x, that I’d still devote school time to the main threats. Even if I had ten safety lessons to allocate, I’d guess that the most protective way to allocate them is still to give all ten to road, drowning, other types of accident.

I'm sure that if you google kids dying in school fires in the UK you wouldn't come up with much either, but does that mean we shouldn't 'divert attention away from water safety' by holding fire drills?

I looked up child fire deaths (not just in schools, because school fire talks don’t just protect against that), and they are about 5 a year. So, well below road safety or drowning, and well above school attack. I do think that is relevant to deciding what we should focus on.

Saying: ‘well, fire’s a 4x lower risk than drowning, I bet you think we should prioritise drowning there too!’ doesn’t feel like a gotcha to me. Obviously as the numbers get closer it’s more nuanced (maybe there’s nothing more we can say to children that will change their water behaviour, but there is for fire, for example. Or if your school is near water, that’s obviously relevant). But this kind of comparing using data and reason isn’t some sort of crazy talk. It’s normal and good safety practice.

If not making these decisions on data and reason, what else to go on?

Based on your repeated assertion and no evidence then.

An assertion that school attacks in the US have a contagion aspect, yes, and that suicide and anorexia and cutting do, including in the UK.

Do you doubt those claims? Or you just haven’t previously heard them so need the data now?

Fire drills are for the school setting. Fire safety talk will be something different. I remember going on a school trip when DS was in Y6 to local leisure centre where all the local Y6 classes converged to have various safety talks including ones from all emergency services. DS is well beyond Primary age now. Would be interesting if they have built in safety talk on what to do in a terrorist type scenario on this trip now

School attacks have a contagion aspect.

There is evidence that school attacks inspire other school attacks.

The argument that sitting in a classroom with the door locked inspires school attacks is one that you alone appear to be making.

Do fire drills encourage arson?

They won't, but staff will have "what to do in terror attack". It's essentially, run and hide.

@TheMissingLinkHasBeenFound the most chilling session on the safety talk was about on line safety and grooming. Maybe some of the posters on here who don’t like the thought of lockdown drills would complain about talks like this. I was quite traumatised by it.

A) irrelevant they're not.
B) it no mt about "school attacks" it's about getting YOUR CHILD to safety in a calm and efficient manner where an event might cause them to be at risk of harm. This could be a mad man with a knife, but it's more likely to be a rogue animal, and angry parent, an air ambulance needing to land on the school field, an incident in the road outside which means pupils cannot be safely released etc.

OK, this is a much more productive style of discussion. Actually pick the bit you doubt, and engage with it, and we can discuss that.

My concern is that things that are described to or perceived by children as attack drills may serve to normalise the idea that attacking a school is a normal or reasonable response to distress. That we've heard on this board of how drills are so described or so interpreted, at least by older children. And that by analogy to what we know happens with other responses to distress (suicide, cutting, anorexia), it's a legitimate worry that this may in fact be the result. And that, given the extremely low base rate of attacks, the risk is that in the UK context especially, it's the drills that would do more to normalise the idea rather than, say, media coverage of actual UK attacks (because they, currently, are so rare).

This on the other hand, is a waste of both our time. I've already given my view upthread, as well as my reason for it. I don't think fire drills standardly increase the risk of fire, though I do think doing widespread 'arson drills' might well in fact do that. In other words, that it's the normalisation route that I think does have an effect on children's behaviour in response to distress.

it's a legitimate worry that this may in fact be the result.

You assert that its a legitimate worry, I assert that it's absolute bollocks.

Seeing self harm, anorexia or a killer glorified in a school shooting is nothing like an alarm going off and kids going to their classroom or staying in their classroom, while being told by their teacher that it's in case of a gas cloud or dangerous dog, or needing to get them inside away from an incident.

Schools do actually have lockdowns, for a variety of reasons, they are not uncommon. Among teacher friends from different schools I can think of at least three cases of kids being kept locked in classrooms in the last twelve months because of genuine need to keep them safe. That you don't appear to know that suggests that the actual lockdowns aren't inspiring a string of school attacks, so why would a practice run?

My kids had this at primary school in the UK 8yrs ago. The threat has been real for a while

a) It's not irrelevant to working out where we agree or disagree (I do realise that you aren't the original person I was discussing with, but that's why that question is there. And I do in fact think they are trade-offs, because I think we are always making trade-offs, and if you are choosing to give time to X that you could give to Y, that is a choice. It's legitimate to discuss whether it's a good choice).

b) Sure, there are many reasons to do these drills. My claim is not about whether they are useful in case of an air ambulance or animal. Happy to discuss that if you want to. My focus was to engage with the OP's post, which was about school intruders and comparing to the US. Very often such attacks are current or former students of the school.

Of course, it's totally legitimate to think it's good to practice drills to help with an air ambulance, an animal, or an angry parent. But if, as you say, the point is to get your child to safety when there is a risk of harm, then I think it's helpful to consider whether the drills themselves cause harm. I could help my child practice handling choking by giving them things to choke on, after all, but we don't, not because the practice wouldn't help them learn how to handle choking, but because it's not irrelevant whether our method is itself dangerous.

These are all reasonable positions. I guess I don't understand why all the aggro and calling things stupid, daft, bollocks, etc etc etc., claiming that my motive must be to oppose keeping children safe, etc.

We disagree, that's all. You think it's illegitimate to worry about normalisation of attacks, I don't.

It's relevant to point to the fact we don't have a string of school attacks. You see that as a reason to support having drills, I think it's a reason to devote more of that time to things that are significantly greater threats (like, 100x, if looking at deaths), while I also worry that we might be changing our culture in a way that creates a risk that wasn't previously there.

If not doing invacuation drills how do you propose schools teach the process of getting children into a safe space, say to get away from an angry parent, or clear area for air ambulance in the same way they teach evacuation drills @GeneralPeter

It's relevant to point to the fact we don't have a string of school attacks. You see that as a reason to support having drills

<bangs head against wall> because lockdown drills aren't just about school attacks.

I'm really not sure why you've been so emotional about this throughout. I think we each understand each other's position fairly well by now. Different judgments about things, based on different assessments of the evidence and different prioritisation of goals, are pretty normal (or should be). Not cause for head-banging. Anyway, have a good rest of the weekend.

@GeneralPeter do you work in a school?

Why would the drill itself cause harm?

What harm is coming form children quietly moving into a classroom at the sound of a particular bell?

Why would that increase the amount of "madmen" attacks?

You haven't provided any evidence that lockdown drills increase school attacks.

Your position seems to be that having a method if getting children into a room, quickly and quietly causes some sort of issue.

But you haven't really said what you think is going to happen or what you're basing that on?

We're saying that 99% of the real alarms,will be for reasons that are not knife wielding maniacs. So your logic states that, actually there's going to be an increase in loose animals on school grounds, or unidentified liquid spills...

No. Do I work in risk management? Yes. Could it be that our different perspectives lead to different judgments? Yes.

Anyway, I'm not saying you are definitely wrong. And I realise you haven't been the main person engaging with me. I've just found it a bit tiresome being told (not by you) that I must not want to keep children safe, that my concern is stupid, daft, that my posts with numbers and careful reasoning are mere unevidenced assertion, etc.

If you work in a school, I'm sure you are keen to keep children safe, and I don't think that attacks are the only (or even main) reason to do such drills. Not at all. But that was the aspect I was highlighting (largely because it was the OP's too).

And as a broader point, I do think it's healthy to keep in mind proportionality about different types of risk. Humans tend to overestimate shocking but very rare risks, over much greater risks that are more familiar. So to keep children the most safe, we should try to guard against that by thinking deliberately about what the main safety risks actually are. As many of the early posts were about how it's sadly absolutely necessary we have attack drills, I though some data would help.