Help please! Terrorist drill @ holiday club!!

[Justtryingmybest123]

Hi everyone

Hope you're doing well and surviving the holidays!

I need some help please!!

I just completely flabbergasted!

My daughter attends a well known holiday club in the west midlands. Today she came home, extremely upset, distraught and distressed. She mentioned that they had a procedure called the 'lockdown'. She went onto say that basically if someone comes into the garden etc, they will announce it's a lockdown and you need to hide and ensure something is over your head so you can't be found. She is 5 years old and is part of the 5-7 group at the holiday club.

This evening she's been so upset and distraught about the whole thing, she didn't manage to cover her head, so was worried about that, asking what would happen in that situation, she's worried there will be a lockdown at home, the door shook because of the wind as the windows are open, she was scared because of that, and also would not go to sleep as she's scared something will happen.

Furthermore she absolutely loves this holiday club after trying a different one, and is extremely excited to go even when it's term time, now she's sooo worried and scared about going back as apparently there's going to be another lockdown.

I honestly don't know what to even say or think! My initial reaction is what the you know what! I didn't know anything about this, I wasn't informed, I didn't provide consent or anything! She's absolutely shook, scared and worried for her safety and that something may happen to her.

I know about the awful tragedy that did take place and sadly little girls lost their lives, without the details I guess this is as a prevention for something like that occuring, but having this sort of impact isn't the right answer, surely they need to let us know about this and get consent?

I've emailed, text and rang the club as I had to do something.

Any thoughts on the matter or advise would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

All schools do them

Simply not true.

But it’s not your fault if your school tells you that.

I live in a capital city and work in a school. Never have we done one of these drills neither have my dc at either their primary or secondary schools.

@Itstwelveoclocksomewhere all schools should do them as it’s recommended by the DFE for preparedness. Of course, some schools aren’t run very well (as we all know) and won’t do them. God forbid, anything happens in those schools as the poor kids wouldn’t know what to do. It’s as bad as not knowing what to do in a fire.

The official government guidance issued to schools tells them that they should do it as part of their obligations towards ensuring the safety of the children and staff in their care. It’s been linked to several times in this thread. If a school isn’t doing it then what other safety guidance are they choosing not to follow?

It literally says it’s non statutory guidance!

@liveforsummer do you know what that means?

“Non-statutory guidance” means:

• It is advice or recommendations issued by the government, a regulator, or another authority.
• Schools, councils, or organisations are not legally required to follow it.
• However, it is often considered best practice and may strongly influence what inspectors (like Ofsted in schools) expect to see.

well yes, schools are not breaking the rules by not doing it as is being heavily suggested upthread. We don’t have ofsted in Scotland so schools are not judged on it. Seems the schools doing it are likely doing so to raise their ratings in that case

They’re doing it to protect the children in case of an incident - what a bizarre take you have on this!

No. My school is rural. It’s for all situations where chn might need to come inside to avoid an emergency outside. Could be a loose horse, a medical helicopter landing etc.

My dcs' 2ry school have Evacuation (ie fire drill), Invacuation (ie lockdown) and Run. They added Run (which they don't practice, but do discuss as part of Invac drill) when they realised that if there is a gun or knife attack it might save more lives to have as many children as possible fleeing in as many different directions as possible, rather than a classroom of children trapped with a killer.

I've done Invac drills with little children, too. There is no need to frighten the children or tell them lies about it. "Sometimes the safest thing is to stay inside the building, so this is how we do it."

I’d prefer my kids not to have to think about these things at all.

The schools presumably follow non statutory guidelines after doing their own risk assessments which will take location, environment into account.

Anyway you’re happy for your kids to learn to cower in fright (or as another poster bizarrely described it as sit reading quietly with the blinds down (!). We all want different things for our children and we all raise them differently.

Do they not wear seatbelts in case it makes them realise there are car crashes where people die?

Do you not have a fire escape plan in case they realise that fires can rip through a house and kill within minutes?

They’re not ‘cowering in fright’ they go to their classrooms, pull a blind down and read quietly. They had to implement this recently when an angry parent burst into the playground. This is not in an urban school. These things happen everywhere. It’s not about fucking terrorists any more than fire drills are about explosive fire bombs

The examples you are using are not comparable.

At all.

Why? Extrapolate.

Wow, just re-read what you wrote and see whether you can spot the condescension and judgement. Honestly you come across as an unpleasant person.

I have a very well adjusted, resilient, happy 11 year old daughter who has taken part in several lockdown drills and a couple of real life scenarios involving a big dog running loose around the school, and some local idiots who decided to fly drones over the school playground. She has never once been terrified by the situation or been left “cowering” in a corner.

it’s a lovely school, with good results including Ofsted and test scores, with great pastoral support and lots of community activities.

Baffled by what @Itstwelveoclocksomewhere is imagining a lockdown drill is if they find the idea of kids sitting quietly in the book corner so unbelievable 😂

Maybe the teachers all screaming 'BAD MAN! BAD MAN!' while terrified 5 year olds scatter?

At my child’s school the teachers scream ‘you’re going to die a horrible death’ repeatedly. Kids all seem well adjusted

Don’t be ridiculous.

Exactly.

Whats next, complaining that an airline does the safety briefing at the start of a flight, because their “sensitive” child is going to have nightmares about the plane crashing.

I teach at a rural private school. All very leafy and as far away from rough as you can possibly get.

We still do lockdown drills.

The buildings lock automatically, we close the blinds and switch off all lights. If the blinds can’t close then you move to part of the room that can’t be seen.

The kids might not mention it to parents as it is such a non event. Similar to a fire drill.

An angry parent (particularly if there is a custody battle/ fleeing DA/ child has been adopted) can happen ANYWHERE. It is very unlikely, but probably more likely that a fire and no one has problems practising for that.

She was rude to me about my mum first. Don't dish it out if you don't want it back.

We had them the schools I went to in the 90's. A lot of schools do them in such a way that the children might not necessarily know that that's what was happening.

I don’t remember lockdown drill but I do remember bomb drill. Rather than stand in the carpark near the building we all had to go to the furthest corner of the rugby pitch.

We run a holiday club and there is absolutely no way we would do this with the children - that isn’t to say we haven’t discussed what we would do at length in various scenario’s after the Southport tragedy but it’s a holiday club, we might see the children once for a day or many times but we wouldn’t spend part of the day on a paid for activity doing this for an extremely rare event. I do actually think this would be frightening for the children that attend who often have no real relationship with the adults there. Both my DC’s primary and secondary do them though and I get that (it’s a shame but such is life and children are by and large fairly get on with it unless parents make a fuss) but that’s somewhere they attend every day with adults they know. I would actually complain if I was the OP I think it’s really inappropriate for a holiday club.

Mmm I'm not sure I believe that the vast majority don't do them

But it would be interesting to know for definite